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In response to the strict Butlerian taboo against machines that perform mental functions, a number of schools developed enhanced human beings to subsume most of the functions formerly performed by computers. Some of the key schools arising out of the Jihad include the Bene Gesserit, with their intense mental and physical training, the Spacing Guild, with the prescient ability to find a safe path through foldspace, and the Mentats, whose computerlike minds are capable of extraordinary acts of reasoning.

As he made ready to depart from home for an entire year, Leto tried to hold on to his self-confidence. He knew this was an important step for him, and understood why his father had chosen Ix as a place to study. But he would still miss Caladan terribly.

It was not the young ducal heir’s first trip to a different star system. Leto and his father had explored the multiple worlds of Gaar and the fog-bound planet of Pilargo, where Caladanian primitives were thought to have originated. Those had been mere outings, exciting sight-seeing trips.

However, the prospect of going away for so long, and all alone, made him worry more than he’d expected. He didn’t dare show it, though. I will be Duke someday.

Dressed in Atreides finery, Leto stood with the Old Duke at the Cala Municipal Spaceport, awaiting a shuttle that would carry him to a Guild Heighliner. Two suspensor-borne suitcases hovered near his feet.

His mother had suggested he take retainers, cargo cases full of garments and diversions, and supplies of good Caladanian food; Duke Paulus, on the other hand, had laughed and explained how when he was Leto’s age he’d survived for months on the battlefield with only the few possessions in a pack on his back. He did, however, insist that Leto take one of Caladan’s traditional fishing knives in a sheath at his back.

Siding with his father, as usual, Leto chose to be minimal in his packing. Besides, Ix was a rich industrial planet, not a wilderness; he wouldn’t suffer many privations during his schooling.

When anyone could see her, the Lady Helena bore the decision with stoic good grace. Now she stood beside the departure group dressed in fine robes and a shimmering cape. Though he knew his mother genuinely feared for his well-being, Lady Atreides would never show anything but the most perfect public face.

Adjusting the oil lenses of his father’s field glasses, Leto peered away from the shifting pastels of the dawn horizon, up into the vestiges of night. A glinting speck moved against the stars. When he touched the zoompad, the speck grew until Leto recognized a Heighliner in low orbit surrounded by the shimmering blur of a shield defensive system.

“It’s there— with full shields activated. Are they worried about military action? Here?” With such severe political and economic consequences, Leto couldn’t imagine anyone attacking a Guild craft. Although the Spacing Guild had no military power of its own, it could— through withdrawal of transportation services— cripple any solar system. And with elaborate surveillance mechanisms, the Guild could trace and identify rogue attackers and send messages off to the Emperor, who in turn would dispatch Imperial Sardaukar according to mutual treaty.

“Never underestimate the tactics of desperation, lad,” Paulus said, but did not elaborate further. From time to time he had told his son stories of trumped-up charges against particular people, situations fabricated in the past in order to wipe out enemies of the Emperor or the Guild.

Leto thought that of all the things he was leaving behind, he would miss his father’s insights most, the Old Duke’s brief and perceptive lessons tossed off the cuff. “The Empire functions beyond mere laws,” Paulus continued. “An equally strong foundation is the network of alliances, favors, and religious propaganda. Beliefs are more powerful than facts.”

Leto stared through the thick sky at the magnificent, distant ship and frowned. It was often difficult to separate truth from fiction. . . .

He watched a speck of orange appear below the immense orbiting craft. The color became a streak of descending light that resolved into the shape of a shuttle, which soon hovered over the Cala landing field. Four white gulls whipped around, soaring in the stirred air currents from the shuttle’s descent, then flew shrieking out to the sea cliffs.

Around the shuttle, a shield shimmered and flickered off. All along the spaceport fences, pennants snapped in a salty morning breeze. The shuttle, a white bullet-shaped craft, floated across the field toward the embarkation platform on which Leto and his parents stood separate from the honor guard. A crowd of onlookers and well-wishers waved and shouted from the outskirts of the landing field. The craft and platform connected, and a door slid open in the fuselage.

His mother came forward to say her goodbyes, embracing him without words; she had threatened simply to watch from one of the towers in Castle Caladan, but Paulus had convinced her otherwise. The crowd cheered and shouted their farewells; Duke Paulus and Lady Helena stood hand in hand and waved back at them.

“Remember what I told you, son,” Paulus said, referring to intense counseling he had given the boy in recent days. “Learn from Ix, learn from everything.”

“We already are, lad.” The older man stepped back to the formal guard escort. He exchanged Atreides salutes with his son— an open right hand beside the temple— and all the soldiers did the same. Then Paulus bounded forward to give Leto a hearty hug. . . .

Moments later the robo-piloted shuttle rose away from the black cliffs, churning seas, and cloud-wreathed croplands of Caladan. Inside, Leto sat in a plush chair in the observation lounge, peering out a windowport. As the craft reached the indigo darkness of space, he saw the metallic island of the Guild Heighliner with sunlight glinting off its surface.

At their approach, a yawning black hole opened in the underside. Leto took a deep breath, and the immense ship swallowed the shuttle. He envisioned what he had once seen in a filmbook about Arrakis, a sandworm inhaling a spice harvester. The metaphor unsettled him.

The shuttle slid smoothly into the docking port of a Wayku passenger ship that hung in its designated berth inside the cavernous hold of the Heighliner. Leto boarded, his suitcases floating along behind, and made up his mind to do as his father had instructed.

Learn from everything. His determined curiosity pushing his intimidation aside, Leto climbed a stairway to the main passenger lounge, where he found a seat on a bench by another window. Two soostone merchants sat nearby, their rapid conversation sprinkled with jargon. Old Paulus had wanted Leto to learn how to fend for himself. So, to enhance the experience, Leto was traveling as an ordinary passenger, with no special amenities, no pomp or entourage, no indication that he was the son of a Duke.

Aboard the ship, Wayku vendors wearing dark glasses and earclamp headsets moved from passenger to passenger, selling confections and perfumed beverages at exorbitant prices. Leto waved off a persistent vendor, though the spicy-salty broths and broiled meat sticks smelled delicious. He could hear an overflow of music from the man’s headset, saw his head, shoulders, and feet moving to the beat of music piped into his skull. The Wayku did their jobs, tended to the customers, but managed to live in their own sensory cacophony; they preferred the universe within to any spectacle they might experience outside.

This mass-transit craft, operated by the Wayku under Guild contract, carried passengers from system to system. A disgraced House Major whose planets had all been destroyed in the Third Coalsack War, the Wayku were gypsies now and lived as nomads aboard Guild Heighliners. Although ancient surrender terms prevented members of their race from setting foot on any planet in the Imperium, the Guild had, for undisclosed reasons, granted them sanctuary. For generations, the Wayku had showed no interest in petitioning the Emperor for amnesty or a revocation of the severe restrictions placed upon them.

Looking through the window of the lounge, Leto saw the dimly illuminated cargo hold of the Heighliner, a vacuum chamber so large that this passenger ship was, by comparison, even smaller than a grain of pundi rice in the belly of a fish. He could see the ceiling high overhead, but not the walls kilometers away. Other ships, large and small, were arrayed in the hold: frigates, cargo haulers, shuttles, lighters, and armored monitors. Strapped-together stacks of “dump boxes”— unpiloted cargo containers designed to dump material directly from low orbit onto a planet’s surface— hung next to the main exterior hatches.

Guild regulations, etched on ridulian crystals mounted to the main wall of every room, prohibited passengers from leaving the isolation of their ship. Through adjacent windows Leto snatched glimpses of passengers inside other craft— a potpourri of races bound for all parts of the Imperium.

The Wayku deckhands finished their first round of service, and the passengers waited. The trip through foldspace took no more than an hour, but preparations for departure sometimes required days.

Finally, with no announcement whatsoever, Leto detected a faint, smooth purring that seemed to come from far away. He could feel it in every muscle of his body. “We must be heading out,” he said, turning to the soostone merchants, who seemed unimpressed. From the quick diverting of their eyes and the way they studiously ignored him, Leto thought they must consider him an uncultured yokel.

In an isolated chamber high atop the craft, a Guild Navigator swimming in a tank of gas saturated with melange began to encompass space with his mind. He envisioned and threaded a safe passage through the fabric of foldspace, transporting the Heighliner and its contents across a vast distance.

At dinner the previous evening in the Castle’s dining hall, Leto’s mother had wondered aloud if Navigators might somehow violate the machine-human interaction prohibited by the Butlerian Jihad. Knowing Leto would soon be off to Ix and at risk of moral tainting, she innocently made the suggestion as she nibbled on a mouthful of lemon-broiled fish. She often used a most reasonable tone when she uttered her provocative statements. The effect was like dropping a boulder into a pool of still water.

“Oh, nonsense, Helena!” Paulus said, wiping his beard with a napkin. “Where would we be without Navigators?”

“Just because you have become accustomed to a thing, does not make it right, Paulus. The Orange Catholic Bible says nothing about morality being defined by personal convenience.”

Before his father could argue the point, Leto interrupted. “I thought that Navigators just saw the way, a safe way. Holtzman generators actually operate the spacecraft.” He decided to add a quote he remembered from the Bible. “ ‘The highest master in the material world is the human mind, and the beasts of the field and the machines of the city must be forever subordinate.’ ”

Now, he didn’t notice any change of sensation upon passing into foldspace. Before Leto knew it, the Heighliner arrived in another solar system— Harmonthep, according to the transport schedule.

Once there, Leto had to wait for five more hours as cargo ships and shuttles went in and out of the Heighliner hold, as well as transports and even a superfrigate. Then the Guild ship moved off again, folding space to a new solar system— Kirana Aleph, this time— where the cycle occurred once more.

Leto took a nap in the sleeping compartments, then emerged to buy two of the sizzling meat sticks and a potent cup of stee. Helena might wish he’d been escorted by Atreides house guards, but Paulus had insisted that there was only one way for his son to learn to take care of himself. Leto had an agenda and instructions, and he vowed to do just that.

Finally, on the third stop, a Wayku deckhand ordered Leto to descend three decks and board an automatic shuttle. She was a stern-looking woman in a gaudy uniform and did not seem to be in the mood for conversation. Her headset thrummed with an undercurrent of melody.

“Is this Ix?” Leto inquired, reaching for his suspensor-buoyed suitcases. They followed him as he moved.

“We are in the Alkaurops system,” she said. Her eyes couldn’t be seen because of her dark glasses. “Ix is the ninth planet. You get off here. We’ve already jettisoned the dump boxes.”

Leto did as he was instructed, making his way toward the indicated shuttle, though he wished he had been given more warning and more information. He didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do once he arrived on the high-tech industrial world, but he assumed Earl Vernius would greet him or at least send some sort of welcoming party.

The robo-piloted shuttle plummeted out of the Heighliner hold toward the surface of a planet traced with mountains, clouds, and ice. The automated shuttle functioned according to a limited set of instructions, and conversation wasn’t in its repertoire of skills. Leto was the only passenger aboard, apparently the only traveler bound for Ix. The machine planet welcomed few visitors.

As he looked out the porthole, though, Leto had a sinking feeling that something had gone wrong. The Wayku shuttle approached a high mountain plateau with Alpine forests in sheltered valleys. He saw no buildings, none of the grand structures or manufacturing facilities he had expected. No smoke in the air, no cities, no sign of civilization at all.

This couldn’t possibly be the heavily industrialized world of Ix. He looked around, tensing up, ready to defend himself. Had he been betrayed? Lured here and stranded?

The shuttle came to a stop on a stark plain strewn with flecked granite boulders and small clumps of white flowers. “This is where you get out, sir,” the robo-pilot announced in a synthesized voice.

“Where are we?” Leto demanded. “I’m supposed to be going to the capital of Ix.”

“Answer me!” His father would have used a booming voice to wrench a reply from this stupid machine. “This can’t be the capital city of Ix. Just look around you!”

“You have ten seconds to exit the craft, sir, or you will be forcibly ejected. The Guild operates on a tight schedule. The Heighliner is already prepared to depart for the next system.”

Cursing under his breath, Leto nudged his drifting luggage and stepped onto the rubble-strewn surface. Within seconds the white, bullet-shaped craft rose and dwindled to a pin-point of orange light in the sky, before it disappeared from view entirely.

His pair of suitcases hovered beside him, and a clean-smelling wind ruffled his hair. Leto was alone. “Hello?” he shouted, but no one answered.

He shivered as he stared at rugged mountain ridges dusted with snow and glacial ice. Caladan, mostly an ocean world, had very few mountains approaching this grandeur. But he had not come to see mountains. “Hello! I’m Leto Atreides, from Caladan!” he called out. “Is anyone here?”

A sick feeling clenched his chest. He was far from home on an unknown world, with no way to find out where in the vast universe he was. Is this even Ix? The brisk wind was cold and sharp, but the open plain remained eerily quiet. Oppressive silence hung in the thin air.

He had spent his life hearing the lullaby of the ocean, the songs of gulls, and the bustle of villagers. Here he saw nothing, no welcoming party, no signs of habitation. The world looked untouched . . . empty.

Thickening clouds concealed the sky, though he saw a distant blue sun through a break in the cover. He shivered again and wondered what he should do, where he should go. If he was going to be a Duke, he had to learn to make decisions.