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"Alexei," said the Duke, "I'm doing a hateful thing, but I must." He stood beside the portable poison sniffer that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing's sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Alexei of some bizarre newly-dead insect.
The Duke's attention was directed out the windows at the landing field and its roiling of dust against the morning sky.
Alexei had a viewer in front of him containing a short filmclip on Szgany religious practices. The clip had been compiled by one of Botkin's experts and Alexei found himself disturbed by the references to himself.
"Nayee DeeDee!"
"Lekom or-Goeb!"
He could shut his eyes and remember the shouts of the crowds. So that is what they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Mother Baba had said: Sokratit' Puti. The memories touched his feelings of horrible purpose, shading this strange planet with sensations of familiarity that he could not understand.
"A hateful thing," the Duke said.
"What do you mean, sir?"
Nicholas turned to look down at his son. "Because the Seppanens think to trick me by making me distrust your mother. They don't know that I'd sooner distrust myself."
"I don't understand, sir."
Again, Nicholas looked at the windows. The white sun was well up into its morning quadrant. Milky light picked out a boiling of dust clouds that spilled over into the blind canyons interfingering the Barrier Wall.
Slowly, speaking slowly to restrain his anger, the Duke explained to Alexei about the mysterious note.
"You might as well mistrust me," Alexei said.
"They have to think I've succeeded," the Duke said. "They must think me this much of a fool. It must look real. Even your mother may not know the sham."
"But, sir! Why?"
"Your mother's response must not be an act. Oh, she's capable of a supreme act---but too much rides on this. I hope to smoke out a traitor. It must seem that I've been completely cozened. She must be hurt in such a way that she doesn't suffer greater hurt."
"Why do you tell me this, Father? Maybe I'll give it away."
"They'll not watch you in this thing," the Duke said. "You'll keep the secret. You must." He walked to the windows, spoke without turning. "This way, if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth---that I never doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this."
Alexei recognized the death thoughts in her father's words, spoke fast. "Nothing's going to happen to you, sir. The..."
"Be silent, son."
Alexei stared at his father's back, seeing the fatigue in the angle of the neck, in the line of the shoulders, in the slow movements.
"You're just tired, Father."
"I am tired," the Duke agreed. "I'm morally tired. The melancholy degeneration of the Great Houses has afflicted me at last, maybe. And we were such strong people once."
Alexei spoke in rapid-fire anger. "Our House hasn't degenerated!"
"It hasn't?"
The Duke turned, faced his son, revealing dark circles beneath hard eyes, a cynical twist of mouth. "I should wed your mother, make her my Duchess. Yet.....my unwedded state gives some Houses hope they may yet ally with me through their marriageable daughters." He shrugged. "So, I...."
"Mother has explained this to me."
"Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura."
"You lead well," Alexei protested. "You govern well. Men follow you willingly and love you."
"My propaganda corps is one of the finest," the Duke said. Again, he turned to star out at the basin. "There's greater possibility for us here on Dyuna than the Imperium could ever suspect. Yet sometimes I think it'd have been better if we'd run for it, gone renegade. Sometimes I wish we could sink back into anonymity among the people, become less exposed to...."
"Father!"
"Yes, I am tired," the Duke said. "Did you know we're using spice residue as raw material and already have our own factory to manufacture filmbase?"
"Sir?"
"We mustn't run low on filmbase," the Duke said. "Else, how could we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?"
"You should get some rest," Alexei said.
Again, the Duke faced his son. "Dyuna has another advantage I almost forgot to mention. Spice is everything here. You breathe it and eat it in almost everything. And I find that this imparts a certain natural immunity to some of the most common poisons of the Assassins' Handbook. And the need to watch every drop of water puts all food production---yeast culture, hydroponics, chemavit, everything----under the strictest surveillance. We cannot kill off large segments of our population with poison---and we cannot be attacked this way, either. Dyuna makes us moral and ethical."
Alexei began to speak, but the Duke cut him off, saying: "I have to have someone I can say things to, Son." He sighed, glanced back at the dry landscape where even the flowers were gone now, trampled by the dew gatherers, wilted under the early sun.
"On Eser, we ruled with air and sea power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Alexei. What's to become of you if anything happens to me? You'll not be a renegade House, but a guerilla House---running, hunted."
Alexei groped for words, could find nothing to say. He had never seen his father this despondent.
"To hold Dyuna," the Duke said, "one is faced with decisions that may cost one his self-respect." He pointed to the window to the Romanov green and black banner hanging limply from a staff at the landing field's edge. "That honorable banner could come to mean many evil things."
Alexei swallowed in a dry throat. His father's words carried futility, a sense of fatalism that left the boy with an empty feeling in his gut.
The Duke took an antifatigue pill from a pocket, gulped it dry. "Power and fear," he said. "The tools of statecraft. I must order new emphasis on guerilla training for you. That filmclip there---they call you 'Nayee DeeDee'---'Lekom or-Goeb!'---as a last resort, you might capitalize on that!"
Alexei stared at his father, watching the shoulders straighten as the pill did its work, but remembering the words of fear and doubt.
"I say! What's keeping that blasted ecologist?" the Duke muttered. "I told Eugene to have him here early."138Please respect copyright.PENANA0f6GR1Oh4h
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