Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [142]
“We Bene Gesserit can always provide new threats if you wish, Baron, though evidence of your fraudulent spice-production reports should still be sufficient to bring down the Emperor’s wrath.”
The Baron raised an eyebrow and finally deigned to snatch a slick black robe from his dressing chair. “I have it on certain authority that several Great Houses have their own stockpiles of melange. Some say even our own Emperor Elrood is not above the practice.”
“The Emperor is not in good humor or good health these days. He seems to be preoccupied with Ix.”
Baron Harkonnen paused to consider this. His own spies at the royal Court on Kaitain reported that old Elrood had been increasingly unstable and short-tempered of late, with signs of paranoia. His mind was going, his health was failing, and this caused him to be more vicious than ever, as evidenced by his blithely allowing the destruction of House Vernius.
“What do you think I am?” the Baron asked. “A prized Salusan bull to be put out to stud?”
He had nothing to fear, because the witches no longer had a scintilla of physical proof against him. He had scattered his stockpile of spice to deep hiding places in the isolation of Lankiveil, and ordered the destruction of every scrap of evidence from Arrakis. It had all been done expertly, by an ex-CHOAM auditor in his employ. The Baron smiled. For-mer employ, actually, since de Vries had already dealt with the man.
These Bene Gesserit could threaten him all they wanted, but had no real hold over him. This knowledge gave him a new power, a new way to resist.
The witch continued staring at him impertinently. He wanted to squeeze Margot’s slender throat and shut her up forever. But that wouldn’t solve his problem, even if he survived the confrontation. The Bene Gesserit would just send another, and another. He needed to teach the witches a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget.
“Send your breeding mother to me, if you insist. I shall prepare for her.” He knew exactly what he was going to do. His Mentat Piter de Vries, and probably even his nephew Rabban, would be happy to help.
“Very well. The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam will be on her way within a fortnight, Baron.” Without another word, Margot left. Her sparkling blonde hair and milky skin seemed too radiant to be contained within the drab robes of the Sisterhood.
The Baron summoned de Vries. They had to get to work.
Without a goal, a life is nothing. Sometimes the goal becomes a man’s entire life, an all-consuming passion. But once that goal is achieved, what then? Oh, poor man, what then?
—LADY HELENA ATREIDES,
her personal journals
After his childhood years of repression on Giedi Prime, young Duncan Idaho found the lush world of Caladan a paradise. He’d been landed without a map in a city on the opposite side of the world from Castle Caladan. Janess’s friend, the second mate Renno, had discharged his obligations to the boy, then kicked the stowaway out onto the streets of a lowland spaceport.
Paying no further attention to him, the crew off-loaded their cargo of recyclables and industrial scraps and took on a fresh load of pundi rice wrapped in bags made from grain fibers. Without saying goodbye, without offering advice or even wishing Duncan well, the second mate had climbed back aboard his cargo hauler and returned to the Heighliner in orbit.
Duncan couldn’t complain: At least he had escaped from the Harkonnens. Now all he had to do was find Duke Atreides.
The boy stood there among strangers, on a strange world, watching the ship ascend into the cloudy sky. Caladan was a planet of rich and compelling smells, the air moist and laden with the salt of the sea, the sourness of fish, and the spice of wildflowers. In all his life on Giedi Prime, he had never encountered anything like it.
On the Southern Continent, the hills were steep and covered with intensely green grasses and terraced gardens hacked into the slopes like drunken stairsteps.