Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [205]
When Leto II envisioned his Golden Path, he foresaw the direction that humankind should take, but he had blind spots. He failed to see that he was not the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach.
—Bene Gesserit fact-finding commission
In the eleven years Jessica had been back home, she had realized more and more that some things did not add up. This planet might indeed be Caladan, or Dan, but this was not the same home she and her Duke had loved so long ago.
On a stormy evening, as she walked through the restored castle, the incongruous details finally became more than she could bear. Pausing in an upper hallway, she opened a finely carved elaccawood cabinet, an antique that some decorator had placed there. This time, she stood staring at the ornate interior, and on impulse pressed a wooden extrusion in one corner. To her surprise, a panel opened, and inside she found a small blue statuette of a griffin. Perhaps placed there by the Baron ghola, the griffin was the ancient symbol of House Harkonnen. He must have hidden it there as a clever reminder of the falseness of the castle.
As she stared at the statuette, feeling the wrongness of the object, she considered all of her hard work since returning to Caladan. She had directed crews of local laborers to dismantle the Baron’s torture devices and the Face Dancer Khrone’s offensive laboratories from the underground chambers. Through it all she had worked side by side with the cleaning teams, sweating and angry as she scrubbed away every stain, every odor, every hint of the unwanted presence. But Castle Caladan still reeked with reminders. How could she make a fresh start when so much of the past—at least this awkward, out-of-focus echo of the past—hung all around her?
Behind her, moving silently, Dr. Yueh said, “Are you all right, my Lady?”
She looked at the Suk doctor. He wore an expression of deep concern on his buttery face; his dark lips turned downward as he waited for an answer.
“Everywhere I turn, I am reminded of the Baron.” She frowned at the griffin figurine in her hand. “Some of the articles in this castle are authentic, such as that dropleaf desk with the hawk crest, but most are bad copies.”
Making up her mind, Jessica stepped to a segmented window at the end of the hall and swung it open to let in the stormy night air. In a dramatic gesture, she hurled the griffin figurine out to the crashing sea. The waves would soon erode it and break it into unrecognizable pieces. A suitable fate for the Harkonnen icon.
A cold, wet wind whispered into the hall, bringing spatters of rain. Outside, scudding clouds parted to reveal a crescent moon on the horizon, casting cold yellow light on the water.
Moments later she tore down a wall tapestry that she had never liked, and was about to throw that out the window, too, but—not wanting to spoil this beautiful planet—she instead tossed the tapestry on the floor, promising herself to cast it on the trash heap the following morning. “Maybe I should just tear this whole place down, Wellington. Can we ever remove the taint?”
Yueh was shocked at the suggestion. “My Lady, this is the ancestral home of House Atreides. What would Duke Leto—”
“This is a mere reconstruction, fraught with errors.” A gusting breeze blew her bronze hair away from her face.
“Maybe we waste too much time trying to recreate what we see in our old memories, my Lady. Why not build and decorate your home as you choose?”
She blinked as cold rain blew into her face, drenching her jade green dress and wetting the rug. “I thought this place would help my Leto, give him comfort, but maybe it was more for me than for him.”
A ten-year-old boy with coal-black hair came running down the hall, his smoke gray eyes widening with excitement and alarm when he saw the open window. He was even more surprised when neither Jessica nor Yueh reacted to the blowing rain that drenched the rugs and tapestries. “What’s happening?”
“I was considering moving somewhere else, Leto. Would you like