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Kailea will just have to understand that."
The Duke took their coracle around sandbars into the river channel, toward the
mounded barges bedecked with green ribbons fluttering in the breezes. People
were gathered at the docks, loading sack after sack of Caladan's primary grain
export. Wagons rolled up along the riverbank, while low-riding boats drifted in
from flooded fields. Someone shot homemade fireworks into the air, which banged
and sizzled with color in the cloudy skies.
Leto brought their boat up against the main docks near a fully loaded barge
preparing to launch. A large ornamental podium, surrounded by green-and-white
streamers, waited for him.
Pushing his difficult discussion with Rhombur to the back of his mind, Leto put
on a noble face and enjoyed the festivities. It was one of his traditional
duties as Duke Atreides.
Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearances. Do not underestimate
the power of impression over reality.
-CROWN PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO, The Rudiments of Power
BARON HARKONNEN HOBBLED to the highest tower balcony of the family Keep
overlooking the morass of Harko City. He leaned on his sandworm-head cane --
and hated it.
Without the cane, though, he couldn't move.
Damn the witches and what they've done to me! He had never ceased brooding on
how he might get his revenge, but since both the Sisterhood and House Harkonnen
held mutual blackmail information, neither could move openly against the other.
I must find a more subtle way.
"Piter de Vries!" he bellowed to anyone who could hear him. "Send in my
Mentat!"
De Vries lurked near him at all times, hovering there, spying and scheming. The
Baron needed only to shout, and the twisted Mentat could hear. If only everyone
else obeyed him as well -- Rabban, the Mother Superior, even that smug Suk
doctor Yueh. . . .
As expected, the feral man danced in on tiptoes, moving with rubbery limbs. He
carried a sealed parcel in his arms, right on time. The Baron's engineers had
promised results, and every one of them knew he would flay them alive if they
failed him.
"Your new suspensors, my Baron." De Vries bowed and extended the container
toward his master's lumbering hulk. "If you strap them about your waist, they
will decrease your body weight and allow you to move with unaccustomed freedom."
Reaching out with pudgy hands, the Baron tore open the package. "The freedom I
used to have." Inside, linked together on a chain belt, were small globes of
self-contained suspensors, each with its own power pack. While he didn't think
he would fool anyone, at least the suspensor belt would help hide the depth of
his infirmity. And make others wonder . . .
"They may require a bit of practice to use --"
"They'll make me feel fit and healthy again." The Baron grinned as he held the
suspensor globes in front of him, then fastened the belt around his grotesquely
swollen waist -- how had his belly grown so large? He toggled on the suspensor
globes, one by one. With each additional hum, he felt the weight lessening from
his feet, his joints, his shoulders. "Ahhh!"
The Baron took a long step and bounded across the room like an explorer on a
low-gravity world. "Piter, look at me! Ha, ha!" He landed on one foot, then
sprang into the air again, leaping nearly to the ceiling. Laughing, he bounced
once more, then spun on his left foot like an acrobat. "This is so much
better."
The twisted Mentat hovered by the door, wearing a self-satisfied smile.
The Baron landed again and swept his cane from side to side with a whistling
sound like an athletic fencer. "Exactly as I had hoped." He smacked the cane
hard on the unyielding desk surface.
"The parameters may take some getting used to, my Baron. Don't overextend
yourself," the Mentat cautioned, knowing the Baron would do exactly the
opposite.
With the footwork of a gross ballet dancer, Baron Harkonnen crossed the room and
clapped an astonished Piter de Vries paternally on the cheeks, then moved toward
the high, open balcony.
As de Vries watched the big man's foolishly overconfident movements, he imagined
that the Baron would misjudge his bounding strides and sail off the edge of the
Keep tower and into open sky. I can only hope.
The suspensors would hinder his descent somewhat, but they could only lessen the
immense weight. The Baron would strike the distant pavement at a slightly
decreased velocity -- but he would splatter across the streets, nonetheless. An
unexpected bonus.
Since de Vries was responsible for watching over the family's various assets,
including hidden spice stockpiles such as the one on Lankiveil, the Baron's
demise would enable him to shift ownership to himself. Dimwitted Rabban
wouldn't know what was happening.
Perhaps a nudge in the right direction --
But the big man caught himself on the balcony rail and rebounded, settling into
an enthusiastic pause. He stared across the smoky streets and sprawling
buildings. The metropolis looked black and grimy, industrial buildings and
administrative towers that had sunk their roots into Giedi Prime. Beyond the
city lay even dirtier agricultural and mining villages, squalid places that were
barely worth the trouble of keeping in line. Far below, like lice crawling the
streets, workers milled about between labor shifts.
The Baron hefted his cane. "I don't need this anymore." He took one last look
at the silver maw of the symbolic sandworm on its head, ran his swollen fingers
along the smooth wood of the shaft -- then hurled the walking stick out into
open space.
He leaned over the railing to watch it drop, spinning and dwindling, toward the
streets below. He held out a childish hope that it might strike someone on the
head.
Buoyed by the globes on his belt, the Baron returned to the main room, where a
disappointed Piter de Vries looked toward the abrupt edge of the balcony. The
Mentat knew he could never scheme against the Baron, for he would be discovered
and executed. The Baron could always obtain another Mentat from the Bene
Tleilax, perhaps even a new de Vries ghola grown from his own dead cells. His
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