"Bar . . . on Har . . . "
"Be quiet, please, my poor Duke. You haven't much time. That peg tooth I put in your mouth after the tumble at Narcal--that tooth must be replaced, in a moment, I'll render you unconscious and replace that tooth." He opened his hand, stared at something in it. "An exact duplicate, its core shaped most exquisitely like a nerve. It'll escape the usual detectors, even a fast scanning. But if you bite down hard on it, the cover crushes. Then, when you expel your breath sharply, you fill the air around you with a poison gas--most deadly."
Leto stared up at Yueh, seeing madness in the man's eyes, the perspiration along brown and chin.
"You were dead anyway, my poor Duke," Yueh said. "But you will get close to the Baron before you die. He'll believe you're stupefied by drugs beyond any dying effort to attack him. And you will be drugged--and tied. But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth, Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth."
The old doctor leaned closer and closer until his face and drooping mustache dominated Leto's narrowing vision.
"The tooth," Yueh muttered.
"Why?" Leto whispered.
Yueh lowered himself to one knee beside the Duke. "I made a shaitan's bargain with the Baron. And I must be certain he has fulfilled his half of it.
When I see him, I'll know. When I look at the Baron, then I will know. But I'll never enter his presence without the price. You're the price, my poor Duke. And I'll know when I see him. My poor Wanna taught me many things, and one is to see certainty of truth when the stress is great. I cannot do it always, but when I see the Baron--then, I will know."
Leto tried to look down at the tooth in Yueh's hand. He felt this was happening in a nightmare--it could not be.
Yueh's purple lips turned up in a grimace. "I'll not get close enough to the Baron, or I'd do this myself. No. I'll be detained at a safe distance. But you .
. . ah, now! You, my lovely weapon! He'll want you close to him--to gloat over you, to boast a little."
Leto found himself almost hypnotized by a muscle on the left side of Yueh's jaw. The muscle twisted when the man spoke.
Yueh leaned closer. "And you, my good Duke, my precious Duke, you must remember this tooth." He held it up between thumb and forefinger. "It will be all that remains to you."
Leto's mouth moved without sound, then: "Refuse."
"Ah-h, no! You mustn't refuse. Because, in return for this small service.
I'm doing a thing for you. I will save your son and your woman. No other can do it. They can be removed to a place where no Harkonnen can reach them."
"How . . . save . . . them?" Leto whispered.
"By making it appear they're dead, by secreting them among people who draw knife at hearing the Harkonnen name, who hate the Harkonnens so much they'll burn a chair in which a Harkonnen has sat, salt the ground over which a Harkonnen has walked." He touched Leto's jaw. "Can you feel anything in your jaw?"
The Duke found that he could not answer. He sensed distant tugging, saw Yueh's hand come up with the ducal signet ring.
"For Paul," Yueh said. "You'll be unconscious presently. Good-by, my poor Duke. When next we meet we'll have no time for conversation."
Cool remoteness spread upward from Leto's jaw, across his cheeks. The shadowy, hall narrowed to a pinpoint with Yueh's purple lips centered in it.
"Remember the tooth!" Yueh hissed. "The tooth!"
= = = = = =
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan Jessica awoke in the dark, feeling premonition in the stillness around her.
She could not understand why her mind and body felt so sluggish. Skin raspings of fear ran along her nerves. She thought of sitting up and turning on a light, but something stayed the decision. Her mouth felt . . . strange.
Lump-lump-lump-lump!
It was a dull sound, directionless in the dark. Somewhere.
The waiting moment was packed with time, with rustling needle-stick movements.
She began to feel her body, grew aware of bindings on wrists and ankles, a gag in her mouth. She was on her side, hands tied behind her. She tested the bindings, realized they were krimskell fiber, would only claw tighter as she pulled.
And now, she remembered.
There had been movement in the darkness of her bedroom, something wet and pungent slapped against her face, filling her mouth, hands grasping for her. She
had gasped--one indrawn breath--sensing the narcotic in the wetness.
Consciousness had receded, sinking her into a black bin of terror.
It has come, she thought. How simple it was to subdue the Bene Gesserit. All it took was treachery. Hawat was right.
She forced herself not to pull on her bindings.
This is not my bedroom, she thought. They've taken me someplace else.
Slowly, she marshaled the inner calmness.
She grew aware of the smell of her own stale sweat with its chemical infusion of fear.
