Dune

Perhaps it was The Preacher’s choice of words: He spurns it as he spurns you! Perhaps it was his tone, certainly something more than human, a vocality trained surely in the arts of the Bene Gesserit Voice which commanded by mere nuances of subtle inflection. Perhaps it was only the inherent mysticism of this place where Muad’Dib had lived and walked and ruled. Someone called out from the landing, shouting at The Preacher’s receding back in a voice which trembled with religious awe: “Is that Muad’Dib come back to us?”

The Preacher stopped, reached into the purse beneath his bourka, and removed an object which only those nearby recognized. It was a desert-mummified human hand, one of the planet’s jokes on mortality which occasionally turned up in the sand and were universally regarded as communications from Shai-Hulud. The hand had been desiccated into a tight fist which ended in white bone scarred by sandblast winds.

“I bring the Hand of God, and that is all I bring!” The Preacher shouted. “I speak for the Hand of God. I am The Preacher.”

Some took him to mean that the hand was Muad’Dib’s, but others fastened on that commanding presence and the terrible voice—and that was how Arrakis came to know his name. But it was not the last time his voice was heard.

It is commonly reported, my dear Georad, that there exists great natural virtue in the melange experience. Perhaps this is true. There remain within me, however, profound doubts that every use of melange always brings virtue. Meseems that certain persons have corrupted the use of melange in defiance of God. In the words of the Ecumenon, they have disfigured the soul. They skim the surface of melange and believe thereby to attain grace. They deride their fellows, do great harm to godliness, and they distort the meaning of this abundant gift maliciously, surely a mutilation beyond the power of man to restore. To be truly at one with the virtue of the spice, uncorrupted in all ways, full of goodly honor, a man must permit his deeds and his words to agree. When your actions describe a system of evil consequences, you should be judged by those consequences and not by your explanations. It is thus that we should judge Muad’Dib.

—THE PEDANT HERESY

It was a small room tinged with the odor of ozone and reduced to a shadowy greyness by dimmed glowglobes and the metallic blue light of a single transeye monitoring screen. The screen was about a meter wide and only two-thirds of a meter in height. It revealed in remote detail a barren, rocky valley with two Laza tigers feeding on the bloody remnants of a recent kill. On the hillside above the tigers could be seen a slender man in Sardaukar working uniform, Levenbrech insignia at his collar. He wore a servo-control keyboard against his chest.

One veriform suspensor chair faced the screen, occupied by a fair-haired woman of indeterminate age. She had a heart-shaped face and slender hands which gripped the chair arms as she watched. The fullness of a white robe trimmed in gold concealed her figure. A pace to her right stood a blocky man dressed in the bronze and gold uniform of a Bashar Aide in the old Imperial Sardaukar. His greying hair had been closely cropped over square, emotionless features.

The woman coughed, said: “It went as you predicted, Tyekanik.”

“Assuredly, Princess,” the Bashar Aide said, his voice hoarse.

She smiled at the tension in his voice, asked: “Tell me, Tyekanik, how will my son like the sound of Emperor Farad’n I?”

“The title suits him, Princess.”

“That was not my question.”

“He might not approve some of the things done to gain him that, ahh, title.”

“Then again . . .” She turned, peered up through the gloom at him. “You served my father well. It was not your fault that he lost the throne to the Atreides. But surely the sting of that loss must be felt as keenly by you as by any—”

“Does the Princess Wensicia have some special task for me?” Tyekanik asked. His voice remained hoarse, but there was a sharp edge to it now.

“You have a bad habit of interrupting me,” she said.

Now he smiled, displaying thick teeth which glistened in the light from the screen. “At times you remind me of your father,” he said. “Always these circumlocutions before a request for a delicate . . . ahh, assignment.”

She jerked her gaze away from him to conceal anger, asked: “Do you really think those Lazas will put my son on the throne?”

“It’s distinctly possible, Princess. You must admit that the bastard get of Paul Atreides would be no more than juicy morsels for those two. And with those twins gone . . .” He shrugged.

“The grandson of Shaddam IV becomes the logical successor,” she said. “That is if we can remove the objections of the Fremen, the Landsraad and CHOAM, not to mention any surviving Atreides who might—”

“Javid assures me that his people can take care of Alia quite easily. I do not count the Lady Jessica as an Atreides. Who else remains?”