Paul hadn’t slept well for seven nights in a row, and he couldn’t hide the fact from Chani. She got up in the still darkness and came to stand by him on the balcony. Paul had passed through the moisture seal and wore only a loose, lightweight tunic in the dry air, wasting water. No stillsuit. Chani did the same.

When did I forget the basic lessons of Arrakis? he thought. Just because I am Emperor, does that mean water costs me nothing?

Listening to the humming restlessness of the vast city, he absorbed the vibrations in the air, the mixture of scents that filled every breath, unfiltered by stillsuit nose plugs. Arrakeen reminded him of an insect hive, filled with countless skittering subjects, all needing someone else to think for them, to decide for them, to command them.

He looked up into the night sky, saw the stars and imagined all the worlds out there, all the battles still taking place. With a faint smile, he recalled something Irulan had added to one of her stories, an obvious yet mythic fabrication — that at the moment of Duke Leto’s death, a meteor had streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan….

“It pains me to see you so troubled every night, Beloved.” He turned to Chani, let out a long sigh. “My Sihaya, the people trouble me. I have known since childhood that this must come to pass, and I wanted them to trust me, to join me in this journey, to cooperate instead of forcing me to become a tyrant. Now they obey not because it is the right thing to do for the ultimate good of humanity, but because Muad’Dib commands it. If I walked out in the streets during any hour of the day, crowds would form and demand incessantly ‘Guide us, my Lord! Guide us!’ Is that what humanity needs, the danger of relying on a charismatic leader?”

“Perhaps you need guidance yourself, Usul,” Chani said quietly, stroking his dark hair away from his ear. “The guidance of Shai-Hulud. Perhaps you need to remember what it means to be a Fremen. Go out in the desert, summon a worm, and make your own hajj.”

He turned to kiss her on the mouth. “As always, you make me see clearly. Only in the desert can a man’s thoughts be still enough for him to think.” This was exactly what both Paul Atreides and the Emperor Muad’Dib needed.

LEAVING ALIA BEHIND behind as his delegate, he granted her the authority to make the appropriate decisions and perform necessary court functions, with Stilgar positioned as the girl’s adviser and protector (not that she needed one). Paul had offered to take Chani along on his journey, but after studying his face for a long moment, she declined. “You require solitude and stillness, Usul. You and the desert have much to say to each other.”

Sometimes she thought in ways that did not occur to him, as if her mind filled an essential portion of the container of his life. Their relationship was far more than that of a man and a woman, or of kindred spirits, or of any of the usual cliches. The feelings they held for each other stretched across the eons of human existence.

As the sun rose, he took a ‘thopter beyond the broken Shield Wall, past the water trenches that kept the deep-desert worms at bay, and landed at the edge of the vast, open desert. Unfortunately, though he had intended to depart alone, without ceremony, an entourage of assistants, advisers, and gawking observers soon followed. Korba transmitted that he had summoned them to provide Muad’Dib with the fanfare he deserved.

Ignoring them, dwelling on his own concerns, he turned his back on the unwelcome crowd and walked away from his landed ‘thopter, trudging out onto the dunes where he could summon a worm. He glanced over his shoulder and was dismayed to see eight ‘thopters and perhaps a hundred people, some dressed in desert fashion, some wearing the robes of the Qizara priesthood. At least a third of them did not even wear stillsuits.

Korba should know better. When had it changed that people would venture out to the desert as if attending a parade? Paul felt that the purity of the sands had already been lost. The Fremen were so enamored with their continual string of Jihad victories that they failed to recognize the loss of their heritage, the loss of their very souls.

Paul planted a thumper, winding the clockwork mechanism and setting the pendulum to make the rhythmic lump-lump-lump. Although he had done this many times, he still felt awe at the experience. He was an offworlder, yet he was also a wormrider who had proved himself among the Fremen. He had raided the Harkonnens many times. Back then, unlike now, the enemy had been clearly defined, as had victory.

In his Jihad he had offered larger and larger rewards for bringing down Earl Memnon Thorvald, whose rebellion continued to flare up, employing more desperate measures and unexpectedly violent tactics that reminded Paul of the defeated Viscount Hundro Moritani. But the Fedaykin seemed to relish having a persistent enemy to fight. Their outward-looking hatred bound them as a unit.

Behind him by the ‘thopters, some of the observers actually applauded his rote actions in calling a worm, as if he were giving a performance just for them. The thumper continued its droning rhythm. Paul waited, listening for the hiss of sand made by a behemoth worm, scanning for the faint ripple of dunes stirred by underground movement.

The thumper continued to pulse.

The distant audience began to mutter, surprised at what they saw. Finally the clockwork spring ran out, and the thumper fell silent. No sandworm had come. They would call it an inauspicious omen.

Paul lifted the counterweight, rewound the device, and jammed it deeper into the sand before he activated the syncopating mechanism again. He felt awkward. So many people read meanings into everything he did. Muad’Dib didn’t want this.

And now he heard the people continuing to murmur, wondering if Shai-Hulud had abandoned Muad’Dib. Paul began to grow angry, not just at them but at himself. Shai-Hulud did not perform for audiences!

Then, just before the thumper fell silent for a second time, he noticed a stirring of the dunes. A shallow trough ran toward him as a sandworm raced toward the sonic disturbance. His pulse quickened.

Korba saw it next, and the people emitted a loud cheer. The fools! Their noise would distract the creature, and the small barrier of rocks on which they had gathered would never stop a large sandworm.

Paul grabbed his ropes, his Maker hooks, his spreaders. When the sand parted and a huge rounded head exploded upward, he stepped back and clanged his worm hooks together to make a loud reverberating sound, seeking to tug the creature’s attention away from the observers who had finally fallen silent in terror and awe.

“Shai-Hulud! To me!” Paul planted his feet properly, gauging the worm’s approach, and at just the right moment, hooked one of the ring segments. He clasped the rope and scrambled up the worm’s pebbly side.

This was only a medium-sized sandworm. It would serve him well enough, without being impressive, though he was sure the observers would describe it as the greatest ever seen on Dune. Without a backward glance, paying no heed to the cheers and praise, Paul scrambled onto the beast’s back. He inserted the spreaders in a practiced manner, opened the worm segments to the sensitive flesh beneath, and struck the worm’s head with his goad. Anchoring himself with his ropes, he turned the beast and raced out onto the open dunes, spraying sand and dust.

He was comforted by the solitude and heat, and the odors of sulfur and cinnamon that clung to the creature. As the worm raced off, Paul’s conscience came clamoring after him, even into the deepest desert. Kilometers rushed past, but Paul Atreides could not leave his demons behind.