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"Why those, Usul? Are the others poisoned?"
Then he understood. "Most of this spice came from axlotl tanks. But not these--" He showed her his chosen wafers, though they all looked the same. "This spice was made by worms. Sheeana harvested it from the sands in the hold. The closest thing to spice from Rakis itself." He took out several wafers of the compressed spice, much more than he had ever before consumed.
Chani's eyes grew wide. "Usul, that is too much!"
"It is what I need." He touched her cheeks. "Chani, spice is the key. I am Paul Atreides. Melange opened me to my potential before. Melange made me into what I became. I'm going to explode inside unless I find a way to unlock myself." He closed the storage cabinet again. "I am the oldest of the ghola children. This could be the answer for all of us."
When Chani set her jaw, the muscles in her lean, elfin face stood out. "As you say, Usul. Let us hurry."
They ran through the no-ship corridors, using private passages where few surveillance imagers would be, and opened one of the thousands of empty, unused cabins. They slipped inside together. What would the Sisterhood's watchers think of that?
"I should lie down before I start." He sat on the narrow bed. She brought him water from the wall dispenser, and he drank gratefully. "Watch over me, Chani."
"I will, Usul."
He sniffed the wafers of spice, merely guessing but pretending that he knew how much he had to consume. The smell was maddening, mouthwatering, terrifying.
"Be careful, my beloved." Chani kissed him on the cheek, then hesitantly on the lips, and stood back.
He ate the entire wafer, swallowing the burning melange before he could lose his nerve, then grabbed some more and ate it as well. Finally, feeling as if he had stepped off a cliff, he lay back and closed his eyes. A tingling numbness was already creeping in from his extremities. His body began breaking down the chemicals inside him, and he could feel the liberated energy surging through once-familiar pathways in this Atreides body.
And he fell into a pit of Time.
As everything grew dark and he dropped deeper into a trance, lost and searching for the road within him, Paul beheld flashes, familiar faces: his father Duke Leto, Gurney Halleck, and the icily beautiful Princess Irulan. At this level, his thoughts were unfocused. He couldn't tell if these were real flickers of memory or just stored data points boiling to the surface from accounts he had read in the Archives. He heard his mother, Jessica, reading words to him, the verse of a ribald song Gurney sang as he played his baliset, Irulan's unsuccessful attempts at seduction. But that was not enough, not what he sought.
Paul dug deeper. The spice sharpened the images until the details were too intense, too difficult to discern. The fragments suddenly coalesced, and he saw a true vision, like a snapshot of reality exploding inside his mind: He felt himself lying on a cold floor. He was bleeding, a knife wound deep within him. He felt warm blood pouring onto the floor. His own blood. With each pulse of his slowing heart, more and more redness drained away.
It was a mortal wound; he knew it as surely as any animal that crawls away to die. Paul's mind spun. He tried to look beyond himself to see where he was, to see who was with him. He was going to fade away and die there. . . .
Who had killed him? Where was this place?
At first he thought he was the ancient blind Preacher dying among crowds before the Temple of Alia in hot Arrakeen . . . but this wasn't Dune. There was no mob, no hot desert sunshine. Paul could discern the outlines of an ornate ceiling above him, a strange fountain nearby. He was in a palace somewhere, a great domed and colonnaded structure. Perhaps it was the Palace of Emperor Muad'Dib, like the model the ghola children had built in the recreation room. He could not tell.
Then he remembered an event from his library research. Count Fenring had stabbed him . . . an assassination attempt that would have placed the daughter of Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring on the new throne. Paul had very nearly died then.
Was he seeing a flashback of that crucial moment in the first years of his reign, during the bloodiest time of his jihad? It was so vivid!
But why, of all the memories that might be locked within him, would this particular one come to the front of his mind? What was its significance?
Something else didn't seem right. This memory felt uncrystallized and impermanent. Maybe the melange hadn't triggered his ghola memories at all. What if it had instead activated the famed Atreides prescience? Perhaps this was a vision of something deadly that was yet to occur.
As he lay writhing on his bed, deep in the spice-induced vision, Paul felt the pain of the wound as if it were unbearably real. How can I prevent this from happening? Is this a true future I am seeing, a new vision of how my ghola body will die?
The scene blurred before him. The dying Paul continued to bleed on the floor, his hands covered with red. Looking up, Paul was shocked to see himself, a young face very much like the one he routinely saw in a mirror. But this version of his face was pure evil, with mocking eyes and the laughter of gloating triumph.
"You knew I would kill you!" his other self shouted. "You could just as well have driven in the dagger with your own hands." Then he greedily consumed more spice, like a victor taking his spoils.
Paul saw himself laughing, and he felt his own life fading. . . .
PAUL WAS BEING shaken out of the blackness. His muscles and joints ached terribly, but this was nothing like the searing pain of the deep knife wound.
"He's coming around." Sheeana's voice, grim, almost scolding.
"Usul--Usul! Can you feel me?" Someone was clasping his hand. Chani.
"I don't dare risk another stimulant." It was one of the Bene Gesserit Suk doctors. Paul knew them all, since they had been so maddeningly efficient at checking the gholas for any possible physical flaw.
His eyes flickered open, but his vision was veiled with a blue spice haze. He saw Chani now, looking worried. Her young face was so beautiful, and such a stark contrast to that evil, laughing image of himself.
"Paul Atreides, what have you done?" Sheeana demanded, looming over him. "What were you hoping to accomplish? This was damned foolish."
His voice was dry, barely a croak. "I was . . . dying. Stabbed. I saw it."
This both alarmed and excited Sheeana. "You remember your first life? Stabbed? As an old blind man in Arrakeen?"
"No. Different." He searched in h
is mind, realized the truth. He'd had a vision, but had not triggered the full return of his memories.
Chani gave him water, which he gulped. The Suk doctor hovered over him, still trying to help, but she could accomplish little.
Coming out of the spice haze, he said, "It was prescience, I think. But I still don't remember my real life."
Sheeana gave the other Bene Gesserit Sister a sharp, startled look.
"Prescience," he repeated, with more conviction this time.
If he had meant to allay Sheeana's worries, Paul had not succeeded.
The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.
--PAUL ATREIDES,
Memories of Muad'Dib
N
ow that he was himself again, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen found that his days on Caladan were always full, though not in a way he would have preferred. Since his awakening, he had worked to understand the new situation and how descendants of the Atreides had mucked up the universe since he'd been gone.
Once, House Harkonnen had been among the wealthiest in the Landsraad. Now the great noble house didn't even exist, except in his memory. The Baron had plenty of work to do.
Intellectually and emotionally, he should have been pleased to lord it over the homeworld of his mortal enemies, but Caladan didn't compare to his beloved Giedi Prime. He shuddered to think what that place looked like now, and he longed to return there and restore it to its former glory. But he had no Piter de Vries, no Feyd-Rautha, not even his cloddish but useful nephew Rabban.
Khrone had, however, promised him everything--provided that he helped the Face Dancers with their scheme.
Now that the Baron's ghola memories were back, he was allowed some diversions. In the dungeons of the castle, the Baron had certain playthings. Humming to himself, he skittered down the stairways to the lowest levels, where he paused to listen to the enchanting whispers and moans. The moment he entered the main chamber, however, everything fell silent.
