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It will be one of us. . . .
"It seems we have an abundance of Atreides." The Baron ushered his protege forward, his hand clamped on the young man's shoulder. Almost apologetically, as if the wary audience cared, he said, "We call this one Paolo."
Paolo pulled away from him. "Before long you will call me Emperor, or Kwisatz Haderach--whichever term grants me the highest respect." Looking on, the old man and Erasmus seemed to find the whole tableau amusing.
Paul wondered how many times he had been trapped by fate, by terrible purpose. How often and in how many circumstances had he seen himself dead from a knife thrust? Now he cursed the fact that he would face this crisis as a shell of his former self, not armed with the memories and skills of his past.
Unto myself, I must be sufficient.
Snickering, the younger boy walked to where his counterpart stood stiffly at attention. Paul looked back at his mirror image without fear. Despite the age difference, they were approximately the same height, and as Paul looked into his doppelganger's eyes, he knew he must not underestimate this "Paolo." The youth was a weapon as sure and deadly as the crysknife at Paul's waist.
Jessica and Chani moved protectively close to Paul, ready to strike. His mother, with her memories restored, was a full Reverend Mother. Chani, though she did not yet have her past life, had shown considerable fighting skills in earlier practice sessions, as if she still felt Fremen blood in her veins.
Paolo's brow furrowed, his expression flickering for just a moment. Then he sneered at Jessica. "Are you supposed to be my mother? The Lady Jessica! Well, you may be older than I am--but that doesn't make you a real mother."
Jessica gave him a brief, shrewd appraisal. "I know my family, regardless of the order in which they were reborn. And you are not one of them."
Paolo crossed the chamber floor toward Chani, leering with exaggerated hauteur. "And you . . . I know you, too. You were supposed to be the great love of my life, a Fremen girl so insignificant that history recorded little of her youth. Daughter of Liet-Kynes, weren't you? A complete nobody until you became the consort of the great Muad'Dib."
Paul could feel her nails digging into his arm as she ignored the boy and talked to him instead. "The Bashar's teachings were right, Usul. A ghola's worth is not intrinsic in its cells. The process can go horribly wrong--as it clearly did with this young monster."
"It's more a matter of parenting," the Baron said. "Imagine how the universe would be changed if the original Muad'Dib had received different instructions in the uses of power--if I had raised him, as I tried to do with the lovely boy, Feyd-Rautha."
"Enough of this," Omnius broke in. "My machine battleships are even now clashing with--or should I say annihilating?--the pathetic remnants of human defenses. According to my last reports, the humans were making simultaneous stands across space. That will allow me to destroy them all at once and be done with it."
Erasmus nodded to the humans in the cathedral chamber. "Within a few more centuries your own warring factions would have torn your race apart anyway."
The old man shot the independent robot an annoyed look. "Now that I have the final Kwisatz Haderach here, all the conditions have been fulfilled. It is time to end this. There is no need to bother with grinding every inhabited world to dust." His lips quirked in a strange smile. "Though that would be enjoyable as well."
Musing, Erasmus looked from Paul to Paolo. "Although genetically identical, you two have slightly different ages, memories, and experiences. Our Paolo is technically a clone, grown from blood cells preserved on a dagger. But this other Paul Atreides--what is the origin of your cells? Where did the Tleilaxu find them?"
"I don't know," Paul said. According to Duncan, the elderly man and woman had begun their merciless pursuit well before anyone had suggested the ghola project, before old Scytale revealed his nullentropy capsule. How could the evermind have known that Paul would reappear here? Had the machines rigged a complex game? Had the sentient machines developed an artificial but sophisticated form of prescience?
Erasmus made a humming sound. "Even so, I believe you each have the potential to be the Kwisatz Haderach we need. But which of you will prove superior and achieve it?"
"It's me." Paolo strutted around. "We all know that." Obviously the younger boy had been raised with a belief in his role, so that his head was filled with confidence--though it was a confidence born of true skill, not one arising from imagination.
"And how will that be determined?" Jessica asked, looking at both Pauls, weighing them with her eyes.
A side door flowed open near the fountain that sprayed molten metal, and a man in a black one-piece suit emerged carrying an ornate bloodwood box topped with a smaller wrapped package. He was gaunt, with bland features.
"Khrone, there you are! We have been waiting."
"I am here, Lord Omnius." The man glanced at the assemblage and then, either in surrender or a flash of independence, his unremarkable human features faded away to reveal him as a pale and sunken-eyed Face Dancer. Setting the box aside, he carefully unwrapped the translucent fabric of the small package to reveal a brownish-blue paste flecked with gold spangles.
"This is a concentrated and unusually potent form of spice." The Face Dancer rubbed his fingertips and lifted them to his inhuman nose, as if the smell pleased him. "Harvested from a modified worm that grows in the oceans of Buzzell. It will not be long before the witches understand and begin their own operations there to capture the worms and extract the spice. At the moment, though, I hold the only sample of this ultraspice. Its sheer power should be sufficient to plunge the Kwisatz Haderach--one of you--into a perfect prescient trance. You will achieve powers that only prophecy could predict. You will see everything, know everything, and become the key to the culmination of Kralizec."
Erasmus spoke, sounding almost cheery. "After observing how the human race has ruined things without us around to maintain order, the universe definitely needs changing." The robot picked up the bloodwood box and raised the finely etched lid. Inside lay an ornate, gold-hilted dagger, which he picked up with something like reverence. A smear of old blood remained on the blade.
Behind Paul, his mother gasped. "I know that dagger! It's as clear and fresh in my mind as if I just saw it. Emperor Shaddam himself presented it to Duke Leto as a gift, and years later at Shaddam's trial Leto gave it back to him."
"Oh, there is more than that." The Baron's eyes glittered. "I believe the Emperor gave that same dagger to my beloved nephew Feyd-Rautha for his duel with your son. Unfortunately, Feyd didn't quite succeed in that battle."
"I love convoluted stories," Erasmus added. "Later still, Hasimir Fenring stabbed Emperor Muad'Dib with it and nearly killed him. So you see, this dagger has a long and checkered past." He lifted it, letting the light of the cathedral chamber gleam off the blade. "The perfect weapon to help us make our choice, don't you think?"
Paul drew the crysknife Chani had made for him from its sheath at his side. The hilt felt warm in his grip, the curved milky blade perfectly balanced. "I have my own weapon."
Paolo danced back warily, looking at the Baron, Omnius, and Erasmus, as if expecting them to leap to his aid. He snatched the gold-hilted dagger from the robot's hand and pointed the sharp tip at Paul.
"And what are they to do with these weapons?" Jessica asked, though the answer was obvious to everyone.
The robot looked at her in surprise. "It is only appropriate that we solve this problem in a particularly human way: a duel to the death, of course! Is that not perfect?"
The worm is outside for all to see, and the worm is within me, part of me. Beware, for I am the worm. Beware!
--LETO II,
Dar-es-Balat recordings, in his voice
After Paul and his companions were taken from the no-ship, Sheeana found young Leto II in his quarters. Huddling all alone in the dark, the youth was feverish and trembling. At first she thought he was terrified at having been left behind, but she soon realized he was
genuinely sick.
Seeing her, the boy forced himself to his feet. He swayed, and perspiration glistened on his brow. He looked pleadingly at her. "Reverend Mother Sheeana! You're the only one--the only one who knows the worms." His large, dark eyes flicked from side to side. "Can you hear them? I can."
She frowned. "Hear them? I don't--"
"The sandworms! The worms in the hold. They're calling me, tunneling through my mind, tearing me up inside."
Raising her hand for silence, she paused, deep in thought. All her life, Shaitan had understood her, but she had never received any actual messages from the creatures, even when she'd tried to become part of them.
But now, by extending her senses she did feel a tumultuous thrumming in her head and through the walls of the damaged no-ship. Since the Ithaca's capture, Sheeana had ascribed such feelings to the crushing weight of failure after their long flight. But now she began to understand. Something had been scraping through her subconscious, like dull fingernails raking across the slate of her fear. Subsonic pulses of invitation. The sandworms.
"We have to go to the hold," Leto announced. "They are calling. They . . . I know what to do."
Sheeana gripped the boy's shoulders. "What is it? What do we have to do?"
He pointed to himself. "Something of me is inside the worms. Shai-Hulud is calling."
With the no-ship safely trapped in living-metal constructions, the thinking machines paid little attention to the vessel. Apparently, they had wanted to own and control the Kwisatz Haderach . . . a goal that was not as simple as it sounded, as the Sisterhood had learned long ago. Now that he had Paul Atreides in his machine cathedral, Omnius seemed to think he possessed everything he needed. The remaining passengers were irrelevant prisoners of war.
