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Piter said, “is that the Duke will know, too. He knows
now. He can already feel the trap.”
    “It’s true the Duke knows,” the Baron said, and his voice held a note of
sadness. “He could not help but know . . . more’s the pity.”
    The Baron moved out and away from the globe of Arrakis. As he emerged from
the shadows, his figure took on dimension — grossly and immensely fat. And with
subtle bulges beneath folds of his dark robes to reveal that all this fat was
sustained partly by portable suspensors harnessed to his flesh. He might weigh
two hundred Standard kilos in actuality, but his feet would carry no more than
fifty of them.
    “I am hungry,” the Baron rumbled, and he rubbed his protruding lips with a
beringed hand, stared down at Feyd-?Rautha through fat-?enfolded eyes. “Send for
food, my darling. We will eat before we retire.”
    = = = = = =
    Thus spoke St. Alia-?of-?the-?Knife: “The Reverend Mother must combine the
seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess,
holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure.
For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-?between, once
occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness.”
-from “Muad’Dib, Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan
    “Well, Jessica, what have you to say for yourself?” asked the Reverend
Mother.
It was near sunset at Castle Caladan on the day of Paul’s ordeal. The two
women were alone in Jessica’s morning room while Paul waited in the adjoining
soundproofed Meditation Chamber.
    Jessica stood facing the south windows. She saw and yet did not see the
evening’s banked colors across meadow and river. She heard and yet did not hear
the Reverend Mother’s question.
    There had been another ordeal once — so many years ago. A skinny girl with
hair the color of bronze, her body tortured by the winds of puberty, had entered
the study of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Proctor Superior of the
Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX. Jessica looked down at her right hand,
flexed the fingers, remembering the pain, the terror, the anger.
    “Poor Paul,” she whispered.
    “I asked you a question, Jessica!” The old woman’s voice was snappish,
demanding.
    “What? Oh . . . ” Jessica tore her attention away from the past, faced the
Reverend Mother, who sat with back to the stone wall between the two west
windows. “What do you want me to say?”
    “What do I want you to say? What do I want you to say?” The old voice
carried a tone of cruel mimicry.
    “So I had a son!” Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into
this anger deliberately.
    “You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides.”
    “It meant so much to him,” Jessica pleaded.
    “And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!”
    Jessica lifted her chin. “I sensed the possibility.”
    “You thought only of your Duke’s desire for a son,” the old woman snapped.
“And his desires don’t figure in this. An Atreides daughter could’ve been wed to
a Harkonnen heir and sealed the breach. You’ve hopelessly complicated matters.
We may lose both bloodlines now.”
    “You’re not infallible,” Jessica said. She braved the steady stare from the
old eyes.
    Presently, the old woman muttered: “What’s done is done.”
    “I vowed never to regret my decision,” Jessica said.
    “How noble,” the Reverend Mother sneered. “No regrets. We shall see when
you’re a fugitive with a price on your head and every man’s hand turned against
you to seek your life and the life of your son.”
    Jessica paled. “Is there no alternative?”
    “Alternative? A Bene Gesserit should ask that?”
    “I ask only what you see in the future with your superior abilities.”
    “I see in the future what I’ve seen in the past. You well know the pattern
of our affairs, Jessica. The race