great teachings and the epic events he had experienced. He sifted through countless lifetimes, all the way back to his original boyhood on Giedi Prime under Harkonnen tyranny, and later on Caladan as the loyal weapons master of House Atreides. He had given his first life to save Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica.
Then the Tleilaxu had restored him as a ghola called Hayt, and afterward many Duncan Idaho incarnations had served the capricious God Emperor. So much pain, so much exhilaration.
He, Duncan Idaho, had been present at many critical moments in human history, from the fall of the Old Empire and the rise of Muad'Dib, through the long rule and death of the God Emperor… and beyond. Through it all, history had been distilling events, processing and sifting them through the Duncans, renewing them.
Long ago, he had loved the beautiful, dark-haired Alia, even with all her strangeness. Centuries later, he had loved Siona deeply, though it was obvious the God Emperor had thrown them together intentionally. In all of his ghola lifetimes he had loved many beautiful, exotic women.
Why, then, was Murbella so difficult to get over? He could not break the debilitating bond she had with him.
Duncan had slept little in the past week because whenever he went to his cot and clasped his pillow, he could only think of Murbella, sensing the emptiness where her body wasn't. So many years—why wouldn't the ache and addictive longing fade? Restless and wanting to put even more distance between himself and Murbella's siren call, he erased the current navigation coordinates, used his bold—or reckless—intuition, and made a random foldspace jump.
When they arrived at a new and uncharted portion of space, Duncan let his mind drift in a fugue state, deeper than a Mentat's trance. Though he did not admit it to himself, he was looking for any hint of Murbella's presence, though she could not possibly be here.
Obsession.
Duncan could not concentrate, and his woolgathering left them vulnerable to the gossamer yet deadly net that began to coalesce unnoticed around the no-ship.
TEG ARRIVED ON the navigation bridge, saw Duncan at the controls, and noted that the other man seemed consumed by his thoughts, as he often was, especially of late.
His glance went to the control modules, the viewscreen, the path the no-ship had taken along its projected course. Teg studied the patterns on the console, then the patterns in the emptiness. Even without the no-ship's sensors and viewscreens, he could grasp the sheer volume of empty space around them. A new void, a different starless region from where they had been.
Duncan had made a reckless jump through foldspace. But the nature of randomness was such that any new location was just as likely to be closer to the Enemy than farther away.
Something troubled him, something he could not ignore. His Atreides-based abilities allowed him to focus on those anomalies and discern what was not there. Duncan wasn't the only one who could see strange things.
'Where are we?'
Duncan answered with a distant riddle. 'Who knows where we are?' He snapped out of his preoccupied trance, then gasped. 'Miles! The net—it's closing in, tightening like a noose!'
Duncan had thrown the ship not into a safe wasteland, but directly into the vicinity of the Enemy. Like hungry spiders reacting to unexpected vibrations in their web, the old man and woman were closing in.
Already on edge from his premonition, Teg reacted with a burst of speed, without thinking. His body went into overdrive, his reflexes burning bright, his actions accelerating to indefinable speeds. Moving with a metabolism no human body was meant to withstand, he seized command of the navigation controls. His hands worked in a blur. His mind flashed from system to system, reactivating the Holtzman engines in the middle of their recharge.
Immeasurably swift and alert, Teg became part of the ship—and guided them into a sudden and alarming foldspace jump.
He could feel the gossamer, sentient strands make one last futile grasp, but Teg tore the ship free, damaging the net as he lurched the huge vessel across a wrinkle in space, jumping to another place, and then another, wrenching the craft from the searchers' trap. Behind him he sensed pain, severe damage to the net and its casters, and then outrage at losing their prey again.
Teg streaked across the bridge, making adjustments, sending commands, moving so swiftly that no one—not even Duncan—would know he was covering for the other man's mistake. Finally, he slowed back to real time, exhausted, drained, and famished.
Astonished by what Teg had done in less than a second, Duncan shook his head to clear away the tar-pit memories of Murbella. 'What did you just do, Miles?'
Slumped at a secondary console, the Bashar gave Duncan a mysterious smile.
'Only what was necessary. We're out of danger.'
10
A mere player should never assume he can influence the rules of a game.
The blades of the hedge trimmer clacked together, severing random branches to alter the shape of the greenery. 'You see how life persists in straying from its well-defined boundaries?' Annoyed, the old man moved methodically along the high shrub at the edge of the lawn, pruning the outlying stems and leaves, anything that detracted from geometrical perfection. 'Unruly hedges are so unsettling.'
With an insistent clicking of the blades, he attacked the tall shrubs. In the end, the planes were perfectly flat and smooth, according to his specifications.
Wearing an amused expression, the old woman sat back in her canvas lounge chair. She lifted a glass of fresh lemonade. 'What I see is someone who persists in imposing order rather than accepting reality. Randomness has value, too.'
Taking another sip, she thought about mentally activating a set of sprinklers to drench the old man, strictly as a demonstration of unpredictability. But that sort of prank, while amusing, would only provoke unpleasantness. Instead, she entertained herself by watching her companion's unnecessary work.
'Rather than drive yourself mad with adherence to a set of rules, why not change the rules! You have the power to do so.'
He glared at her. 'You suggest I am mad?'
'Merely a figure of speech. You have long since recovered from any sort of damage.'
'You provoke me, Marty.' A brief flicker of danger passed as the old man, with renewed vigor, returned his attention to the garden trimmers. He attacked the hedges again, shaping and molding, not satisfied until every leaf was in its desired place.
The old woman set her glass down and went to the flower beds where a profusion of tulips and irises added splashes of color. 'I prefer to be surprised—to savor the unexpected. It makes life interesting.' Frowning, she bent over to inspect a bristling weed that thrived among her plants. 'There are limits, however.' With a vicious yank, she uprooted the unwanted plant.
'You seem quite forgiving, considering that we still do not have the no-ship under our control. It angers me more each time they get away! Kralizec is upon us.'
'That last time was very close.' Smiling, the old woman moved through her flower garden. Behind her, the wilting blossoms suddenly brightened, infused with new color. The sky was a perfect blue.
'You aren't much concerned about the damage they just caused us. I expended a great deal of effort to create and cast the latest tachyon net. Lovely tendrils, far-reaching… ' He twisted his lips into a scowl. 'And now everything is torn, tangled, and frayed.'
'Oh, you can re-create it with a thought.' The woman waved a tanned hand.
'You're just annoyed because something didn't happen the way you expected it to. Have you considered that
