"How very interesting," Jessica said. And she thought. "
"I've heard you have a saying," Paul said, "that polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert."
"There are many sayings on Arrakis," Kynes said.
Before Jessica could frame a new question, a servant bent over her with a note. She opened it, saw the Duke's handwriting and code signs, scanned it.
"You'll all be delighted to know," she said, "that our Duke sends his reassurances. The matter which called him away has been settled. The missing carryall has been found. A Harkonnen agent in the crew overpowered the others and flew the machine to a smugglers' base, hoping to sell it there. Both man and machine were turned over to our forces." She nodded to Tuek.
The smuggler nodded back.
Jessica refolded the note, tucked it into her sleeve.
"I'm glad it didn't come to open battle," the banker said. "The people have such hopes the Atreides will bring peace and prosperity."
"Especially prosperity," Bewt said.
"Shall we have our dessert now?" Jessica asked. "I've had our chef prepare a Caladan sweet: pongi rice in sauce dolsa."
"It sounds wonderful," the stillsuit manufacturer said. "Would it be possible to get the recipe?"
"Any recipe you desire," Jessica said,
Small talk resumed around her: "Such a lovely fabric..." "He is having a setting made to match the jewel..." "We might try for a production increase next quarter..."
Jessica stared down at her plate, thinking of the coded part of Leto's message: "
Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target.
The unknowns here filled her with uneasiness.
Paul said: "I never doubted we'd find the carryall. Once my father moves to solve a problem, he solves it. This is a fact the Harkonnens are beginning to discover."
***
"There is no escape — we pay for the violence of our ancestors."
Jessica heard the disturbance in the great hall, turned on the light beside her bed. The clock there had not been properly adjusted to local time, and she had to subtract twenty-one minutes to determine that it was about 2 A.M.
The disturbance was loud and incoherent.
She slipped out of bed, checked the screen monitors to see where her family was. The screen showed Paul asleep in the deep cellar room they'd hastily converted to a bedroom for him. The noise obviously wasn't penetrating to his quarters. There was no one in the Duke's room, his bed was unrumpled. Was he still at the field C.P.?
There were no screens yet to the front of the house.
Jessica stood in the middle of her room, listening.
There was one shouting, incoherent voice. She heard someone call for Dr. Yueh. Jessica found a robe, pulled it over her shoulders, pushed her feet into slippers, strapped the crysknife to her leg.
Again, a voice called out for Yueh.
Jessica belted the robe around her, stepped into the hallway. Then the thought struck her:
The hall seemed to stretch out forever under her running feet. She turned through the arch at the end, dashed past the dining hall and down the passage to the Great Hall, finding the place brightly lighted, all the wall suspensors glowing at maximum.