Feeling trapped, Vor tried to intercept the young man who was coiled for violence. “This is Willem. He’s my nephew.”
“Willem Atreides!” The young man threw it out like a challenge just as Vergyl Harkonnen emerged from the study.
The older man had a welcoming smile that changed as soon as he heard Willem’s outburst. “Atreides?” Vergyl looked from the flushed young man to Vor. “Jeron, what is he talking about?”
Sonia’s expression visibly altered: revulsion and fear covered by shock. “He is an Atreides? And he’s your nephew, truly?”
Vor paused, his thoughts racing, and then he reached a conclusion. He added in a strong voice, “Yes. My real name isn’t Jeron Egan. It’s Vorian Atreides.”
Vergyl Harkonnen stumbled, resting a hand against the wall for support. He looked stricken. “Vorian Atreides—the man who murdered our poor Griffin!”
Now that Vor had his chance, he tried to explain. “I didn’t kill your son. I tried to protect him. We were actually friends.”
Sonia gave Vor a fierce scowl. “Why did you come here? Why did you use a false name? To spy on us?”
“At first I came to check on you, to make sure you were surviving. I saw to it that Griffin’s body was returned home for a proper burial. I wish I could have saved him from the violent people who were after me. I have done everything possible to atone.”
Vergyl snorted. “Atone?”
Impatient and angry, Willem pulled himself free of Vor’s grip. “Your daughter Tula married my brother on Caladan. She seduced him, tricked him — and then murdered him on their wedding night. She is a killer, and she escaped justice.”
Sonia and Vergyl were both shaking visibly. “Tula on Caladan? Married? And you accuse her of murder? What in the nine hells are you talking about? Our sweet daughter would never harm anyone!”
Willem reached inside his pocket and grabbed printed images, which he scattered on the floor in front of Vergyl and Sonia. Beautiful wedding portraits showing Tula and Orry, the happy couple. And gory images showing how young Orry lay slaughtered in his bed. “She told my brother she loved him, then she slashed his throat as he lay sleeping.”
“You’re lying!” Sonia cried.
“She was acting so strange…,” Vergyl said in a small, lost voice.
“Tula has to pay the blood price,” Willem said. “The Harkonnens have to pay.” He reached for the long Caladan knife he kept at his waist.
Vor seized his arm. “Not these people. They did not kill Orry.”
As Sonia and Vergyl stared in shock and horror at the images, trying to deny what they saw, Vor took the knife away from Willem and dragged him back to the door. “We need to leave now.”
“No!” Willem struggled, but he was no match for Vor. “Someone has to pay for Orry!”
Vor leaned close and hissed in the young man’s ear. “We know where she is now! Chusuk. These people are not responsible for her crimes.”
Old Vergyl picked up one of the horrific images, staring at it. “No, no, no!”
As Vor pushed Willem out the door into the rising storm, behind them in the Harkonnen house another young man emerged, drawn by the shouts. Danvis — a pale teenager who looked alarmed and unsteady. “What’s happening?”
Willem struggled, but Vor was firm, pushing him out into the streets and fury of the weather. “Not here. This isn’t our target!”
Vor felt the crushing shadows all around him, and he needed to leave. He and Willem had just shattered the lives of these good people — and if Tula was long gone, it would do no good for them to stay any longer.
“We have to get off this planet — and make our way to Chusuk.”
Outside, the aurora storm had arrived in full force, reflecting colorful shimmers that dropped along with the clouds in the sky. The clatter and hiss of hail struck the roofs and the paved street, while signs were torn away by the wind. Yet Vor felt that the storm itself was preferable to staying inside with the devastated Harkonnens.
23
In any universe, nothing is perfect — be it human, machine … or other.
Norma Cenva resided inside her tank of swirling orange spice gas, but she lived primarily within her mind. Her physical body was merely an appendage, of secondary importance. She required her biological machinery to survive, but she immersed herself so deeply in esoteric matters that she rarely thought about her body at all.
Her chamber rested on a dais overlooking the other Navigator tanks on Kolhar, on the outskirts of the capital city. Since returning from Arrakis, she had felt restless and disturbed within the ripples of fate, and even with her expansive thoughts, she could not understand the reasons for her discomfort. The large and fortified spice stockpile would help stabilize their supply, and now that Josef had tightened his control on the desert planet, melange harvesting and distribution should grow.
With the supply of melange, the future for her precious Navigators should be stable and bright … but she still felt grave concern for them, and for mankind.
Gazing toward the VenHold headquarters towers in the distance, she transmitted her wishes to her handlers — failed Navigator candidates with varying degrees of physical abnormalities — and they responded immediately, without questioning why.
The handlers arranged a heavy suspensor hauler to carry her tank across the gray sky, delivering it to the roof of the VenHold headquarters tower. They deposited the ornate chamber on the high rooftop, secured it, and then left her alone, as she requested. Unlike any other Navigator, Norma could have transported herself with her own abilities, but that would have disrupted her complex train of thought.
She felt she was on the verge of a revelation, an epiphany … possibly a specific warning.
Ever since she had rescued Josef from the Imperial Palace on Salusa Secundus after his role in the assassination was exposed, she had monitored the ongoing crisis in the Imperium, assessing second- and third-order consequences. But even with spice prescience, she experienced troubling blind spots that prevented her from seeing certain events and choices. Even prescience held imperfections, too much uncertainty, and for the sake of her Navigators, she needed to know.
This perch on the giant tower gave her a new perspective, from a cosmic standpoint. She gazed outward, and her mind extended beyond the limitations of human vision into the deepest tapestry of space-time. It was like a much larger version of the gas inside her tank and in an infinite variety of colors, with swirling nebulae and galaxies, so beautiful but challenging to her as well, for the difficulties they presented to her prescience.
She strained to envision all the way to the other side of the universe, and from there she peered back at herself with a powerful sense of reflective vision. From that infinite perspective, she gazed down upon Kolhar and her field of developing Navigators. Their tanks sparkled in the bright morning sun. Hundreds of Navigators, tank after tank, stretched across a wide, grassy field.
The universe is ours.
As her concerns knotted into questions that tangled into paradoxes, she needed this different vantage to help her find new solutions to serious problems.
Even though Josef had secured a stronger grip on Arrakis and had created the strategic spice bank, Norma was troubled by his recent rash of increasingly aggressive actions, which could well have unpleasant reactionary consequences. He had swept through the Imperial guard forces left behind on Arrakis, destroying Imperially sanctioned contract operations and seizing the profits for himself.