Baron Harkonnen hobbled to the highest tower balcony of the family Keep overlooking the morass of Harko City. He leaned on his sandworm-head cane— and hated it.

Without the cane, though, he couldn’t move.

Damn the witches and what they’ve done to me! He had never ceased brooding on how he might get his revenge, but since both the Sisterhood and House Harkonnen held mutual blackmail information, neither could move openly against the other.

I must find a more subtle way.

“Piter de Vries!” he bellowed to anyone who could hear him. “Send in my Mentat!”

De Vries lurked near him at all times, hovering there, spying and scheming. The Baron needed only to shout, and the twisted Mentat could hear. If only everyone else obeyed him as well— Rabban, the Mother Superior, even that smug Suk doctor Yueh. . . .

As expected, the feral man danced in on tiptoes, moving with rubbery limbs. He carried a sealed parcel in his arms, right on time. The Baron’s engineers had promised results, and every one of them knew he would flay them alive if they failed him.

“Your new suspensors, my Baron.” De Vries bowed and extended the container toward his master’s lumbering hulk. “If you strap them about your waist, they will decrease your body weight and allow you to move with unaccustomed freedom.”

Reaching out with pudgy hands, the Baron tore open the package. “The freedom I used to have.” Inside, linked together on a chain belt, were small globes of self-contained suspensors, each with its own power pack. While he didn’t think he would fool anyone, at least the suspensor belt would help hide the depth of his infirmity. And make others wonder . . .

“They may require a bit of practice to use—”

“They’ll make me feel fit and healthy again.” The Baron grinned as he held the suspensor globes in front of him, then fastened the belt around his grotesquely swollen waist— how had his belly grown so large? He toggled on the suspensor globes, one by one. With each additional hum, he felt the weight lessening from his feet, his joints, his shoulders. “Ahhh!”

The Baron took a long step and bounded across the room like an explorer on a low-gravity world. “Piter, look at me! Ha, ha!” He landed on one foot, then sprang into the air again, leaping nearly to the ceiling. Laughing, he bounced once more, then spun on his left foot like an acrobat. “This is so much better.”

The twisted Mentat hovered by the door, wearing a self-satisfied smile.

The Baron landed again and swept his cane from side to side with a whistling sound like an athletic fencer. “Exactly as I had hoped.” He smacked the cane hard on the unyielding desk surface.

“The parameters may take some getting used to, my Baron. Don’t overextend yourself,” the Mentat cautioned, knowing the Baron would do exactly the opposite.

With the footwork of a gross ballet dancer, Baron Harkonnen crossed the room and clapped an astonished Piter de Vries paternally on the cheeks, then moved toward the high, open balcony.

As de Vries watched the big man’s foolishly overconfident movements, he imagined that the Baron would misjudge his bounding strides and sail off the edge of the Keep tower and into open sky. I can only hope.

The suspensors would hinder his descent somewhat, but they could only lessen the immense weight. The Baron would strike the distant pavement at a slightly decreased velocity— but he would splatter across the streets, nonetheless. An unexpected bonus.

Since de Vries was responsible for watching over the family’s various assets, including hidden spice stockpiles such as the one on Lankiveil, the Baron’s demise would enable him to shift ownership to himself. Dimwitted Rabban wouldn’t know what was happening.

Perhaps a nudge in the right direction—

But the big man caught himself on the balcony rail and rebounded, settling into an enthusiastic pause. He stared across the smoky streets and sprawling buildings. The metropolis looked black and grimy, industrial buildings and administrative towers that had sunk their roots into Giedi Prime. Beyond the city lay even dirtier agricultural and mining villages, squalid places that were barely worth the trouble of keeping in line. Far below, like lice crawling the streets, workers milled about between labor shifts.

The Baron hefted his cane. “I don’t need this anymore.” He took one last look at the silver maw of the symbolic sandworm on its head, ran his swollen fingers along the smooth wood of the shaft— then hurled the walking stick out into open space.

He leaned over the railing to watch it drop, spinning and dwindling, toward the streets below. He held out a childish hope that it might strike someone on the head.

Buoyed by the globes on his belt, the Baron returned to the main room, where a disappointed Piter de Vries looked toward the abrupt edge of the balcony. The Mentat knew he could never scheme against the Baron, for he would be discovered and executed. The Baron could always obtain another Mentat from the Bene Tleilax, perhaps even a new de Vries ghola grown from his own dead cells. His only hope lay in a fortuitous accident . . . or an acceleration of the effects of the Bene Gesserit disease.

“Now nothing can stop me, Piter,” the Baron said, delighted. “The Imperium had better watch out for Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” the Mentat said.