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Uneasy silence settled over the room.
Jessica, looking down the length of the table, saw a faint trembling at the corners of Leto's mouth, noted the dark flush of anger on his cheeks. What has angered him? she asked herself. Surely not my invitation to the smuggler.
"Some question my changing of the laving basin custom," Leto said. "This is my way of telling you that many things will change."
Embarrassed silence settled over the table.
They think him drunk, Jessica thought.
Leto lifted his water flagon, held it aloft where the suspensor lights shot beams of reflection off it. "As a Chevalier of the Imperium, then," he said, "I give you a toast."
The others grasped their flagons, all eyes focused on the Duke. In the sudden stillness, a suspensor light drifted slightly in an errant breeze from the serving kitchen hallway. Shadows played across the Duke's hawk features.
"Here I am and here I remain!" he barked.
There was an abortive movement of flagons toward mouths--stopped as the Duke remained with arm upraised. "My toast is one of those maxims so dear to our hearts: 'Business makes progress! Fortune passes everywhere!' "
He sipped his water.
The others joined him. Questioning glances passed among them.
"Gurney!" the Duke called.
From an alcove at Leto's end of the room came Halleck's voice. "Here, my Lord."
"Give us a tune, Gurney."
A minor chord from the baliset floated out of the alcove. Servants began putting plates of food on the table at the Duke's gesture releasing them--roast desert hare in sauce cepeda, aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (a rich cinnamon odor from the spice wafted across the table), a true pot-a-oie served with sparkling Caladan wine.
Still, the Duke remained standing.
As the guests waited, their attention torn between the dishes placed before them and the standing Duke, Leto said: "In olden times, it was the duty of the host to entertain his guests with his own talents." His knuckles turned white, so fiercely did he grip his water flagon. "I cannot sing, but I give you the words of Gurney's song. Consider it another toast--a toast to all who've died bringing us to this station."
An uncomfortable stirring sounded around the table.
Jessica lowered her gaze, glanced at the people seated nearest her--there was the round-faced watershipper and his woman, the pale and austere Guild Bank representative (he seemed a whistlefaced scarecrow with his eyes fixed on Leto), the rugged and scar-faced Tuek, his blue-within-blue eyes downcast.
"Review, friends--troops long past review," the Duke intoned. "All to fate a weight of pains and dollars. Their spirits wear our silver collars. Review, friends--troops long past review: Each a dot of time without pretense or guile. With them passes the lure of fortune. Review, friends--troops long past review. When our time ends on its rictus smile, we'll pass the lure of fortune."
The Duke allowed his voice to trail off on the last line, took a deep drink from his water flagon, slammed it back onto the table. Water slopped over the brim onto the linen.
The others drank in embarrassed silence.
Again, the Duke lifted his water flagon, and this time emptied its remaining half onto the floor, knowing that the others around the table must do the same.
Jessica was first to follow his example.
There was a frozen moment before the others began emptying their flagons. Jessica saw how Paul, seated near his father, was studying the reactions around him. She found herself also fascinated by what her guests' actions revealed--especially among the women. This was clean, potable water, not something already cast away in a sopping towel. Reluctance to just discard it exposed itself in trembling hands, delayed reactions, nervous laughter... and violent obedience to the necessity. One woman dropped her flagon, looked the other way as her male companion recovered it.
Kynes, though, caught her attention most sharply. The planetologist hesitated, then emptied his flagon into a container beneath his jacket. He smiled at Jessica as he caught her watching him, raised the empty flagon to her in a silent toast. He appeared completely unembarrassed by his action.
Halleck's music still wafted over the room, but it had come out of its minor key, lilting and lively now as though he were trying to lift the mood.
"Let the dinner commence," the Duke said, and sank into his chair.
He's angry and uncertain, Jessica thought. The loss of that factory crawler hit him more deeply than it should have. It must be something more than that loss. He acts like a desperate man. She lifted her fork, hoping in the motion to hide her own sudden bitterness. Why not? He is desperate.
Slowly at first, then with increasing animation, the dinner got under way. The stillsuit manufacturer complimented Jessica on her chef and wine.
"We brought both from Caladan," she said.
"Superb!" he said, tasting the chukka. "Simply superb! And not a hint of melange in it. One gets so tired of the spice in everything."
The Guild Bank representative looked across at Kynes. "I understand, Doctor Kynes, that another factory crawler has been lost to a worm."
"News travels fast," the Duke said.
"Then it's true?" the banker asked, shifting his attention to Leto.
"Of course, it's true!" the Duke snapped. "The blasted carryall disappeared. It shouldn't be possible for anything that big to disappear!"
"When the worm came, there was nothing to recover the crawler," Kynes said.
"It should not be possible!" the Duke repeated.
"No one saw the carryall leave?" the banker asked.
"Spotters customarily keep their eyes on the sand," Kynes said. "They're primarily interested in wormsign. A carryall's complement usually is four men--two pilots and two journeymen attachers. If one--or even two of this crew were in the pay of the Duke's foes--"
"Ah-h-h, I see," the banker said. "And you, as Judge of the Change, do you challenge this?"
"I shall have to consider my position carefully," Kynes said, "and I certainly will not discuss it at table." And he thought: That pale skeleton of a man! He knows this is the kind of infraction I was instructed to ignore.
The banker smiled, returned his attention to his food.
Jessica sat remembering a lecture from her Bene Gesserit school days. The subject had been espionage and counter-espionage. A plump, happy-faced Reverend Mother had been the lecturer, her jolly voice contrasting weirdly with the subject matter.
A thing to note about any espionage and/or counter-espionage school is the similar basic reaction pattern of all its graduates. Any enclosed discipline sets its stamp, its pattern, upon its students. That pattern is susceptible to analysis and prediction.
Now, motivational patterns are going to be similar among all espionage agents. That is to say: there will be certain types of motivation that are similar despite differing schools or opposed aims. You will study first how to separate this element for your analysis--in the beginning, through interrogation patterns that betray the inner orientation of the interrogators; secondly, by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects, of course, both through voice inflection and speech pattern.
Now, sitting at table with her son and her Duke and their guests, hearing that Guild Bank representative, Jessica felt a chill of realization: the man was a Harkonnen agent. He had the Giedi Prime speech pattern--subtly masked, but exposed to her trained awareness as though he had announced himself.
Does this mean the Guild itself has taken sides against House Atreides? she asked herself. The thought shocked her, and she masked her emotion by calling for a new dish, all the while listening for the man to betray his purpose. He will shift the conversation next to something seemingly innocent, but with ominous overtones, she told herself. It's his pattern.
The banker swallowed, took a sip of wine, smiled at something said to him by the woman on his righ
t. He seemed to listen for a moment to a man down the table who was explaining to the Duke that native Arrakeen plants had no thorns.
"I enjoy watching the flights of birds on Arrakis," the banker said, directing his words at Jessica. "All of our birds, of course, are carrion-eaters, and many exist without water, having become blood-drinkers."
The stillsuit manufacterer's daughter, seated between Paul and his father at the other end of the table, twisted her pretty face into a frown, said: "Oh, Soo-Soo, you say the most disgusting things."
The banker smiled. "They call me Soo-Soo because I'm financial adviser to the Water Peddlers Union." And, as Jessica continued to look at him without comment, he added: "Because of the water-sellers' cry--'Soo-Soo Sook!' " And he imitated the call with such accuracy that many around the table laughed.
Jessica heard the boastful tone of voice, but noted most that the young woman had spoken on cue--a set piece. She had produced the excuse for the banker to say what he had said. She glanced at Lingar Bewt. The water magnate was scowling, concentrating on his dinner. It came to Jessica that the banker had said: "I, too, control that ultimate source of power on Arrakis--water. "
Paul had marked the falseness in his dinner companion's voice, saw that his mother was following the conversation with Bene Gesserit intensity. On impulse, he decided to play the foil, draw the exchange out. He addressed himself to the banker.
"Do you mean, sir, that these birds are cannibals?"
"That's an odd question, young Master," the banker said. "I merely said the birds drink blood. It doesn't have to be the blood of their own kind, does it?"
"It was not an odd question," Paul said, and Jessica noted the brittle riposte quality of her training exposed in his voice. "Most educated people know that the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind." He deliberately forked a bite of food from his companion's plate, ate it. "They are eating from the same bowl. They have the same basic requirements."
The banker stiffened, scowled at the Duke.
"Do not make the error of considering my son a child," the Duke said. And he smiled.
