For C’tair, the pleasures of his life with Miral Alechem were short-lived. Following the holoprojection of Rhombur, they had separated for security purposes, finding different bolt-holes in which to live. They hoped to maximize the odds of at least one of them surviving and continuing their important work. By prior arrangement, they met regularly for furtive looks and muffled words in the cafeteria in which she worked.

On one occasion, however, when he arrived at the appointed time, a different, dull-eyed woman stood at Miral’s position in the food-distribution line. He took his plate of sliced vegetable matter and sat down at the table they usually shared.

C’tair watched the line, but Miral did not appear. Still staring, he ate in concerned silence. Finally, when he took his empty dishes back to where workers scrubbed them for the next shift, he asked one of the food workers, “Where is the woman who was here three days ago?”

“Gone,” came the gruff answer. The older woman with a squarish face frowned. “Is that your business?”

“I meant no offense.” He bowed, taking one step back-ward. A Tleilaxu guard looked over, noticed the discussion. His rodent eyes narrowed, and C’tair moved with careful steps, focused in his demeanor so that he called no further attention to himself.

Something had happened to Miral, but he dared not press the issue. He could ask no one.

When the guard walked over and spoke to the old food server, C’tair increased his pace just enough so that he disappeared into a milling crowd, then ducked to a side shaft, descended into the suboid tunnels, and hurried out of sight. He could feel impending doom pressing around him.

Something had gone terribly wrong. They had captured Miral, and now C’tair was alone again— without an organized resistance, without someone to cover for him and help in his private rebellion. Stripped of outside resources, what chance did he have? Had he been deluding himself all these years?

He’d worked alone before, had sheltered his emotions, but now his heart was filled with longing for her. At times he wished he’d never gotten involved with Miral, because now he worried about her constantly. But in the quietest hours, when he lay alone in his bed, he was thankful for the moments of love they had shared.

He never saw her alive again.

Like angry wasps protecting a hive, the Tleilaxu instituted a brutal crackdown far more repressive than any they had previously enacted. They executed thousands of workers on mere suspicion, just to heighten their reign of terror. It soon became clear that the invaders did not care if they exterminated the entire Ixian population. They could wipe the slate clean, and bring in their own people: gholas, Face Dancers, whomever they chose.

Soon the rebellious Ixian spirit was crushed all over again. C’tair had not struck a blow for six months. In a close call, he had escaped from a Sardaukar trap only by surprising them with a handheld needlegun. Afraid the Tleilaxu might trace his fingerprints or genetic patterns, he had lived in constant fear of arrest.

Nothing ever got better.

After he’d projected Prince Rhombur’s smuggled message, communication with the outside had been blocked off more vigorously than before. No observers or messages were allowed. All independent shipping captains and transportation workers were turned away. He had no way of sending even the briefest message back to Rhombur in exile on Caladan. Ix became little more than a black box that produced technology for CHOAM customers. Under Tleilaxu supervision, much of the work was inferior and there had been cancellations, adversely affecting sales revenues. This was only small consolation to C’tair.

Cut off again, he was unable to find allies, unable to steal the equipment he needed. In his new bolt-hole, only a few components remained, enough that he could perhaps use his rogo transmitter a final time or two. He would make a desperate request to his ethereal Navigator brother for assistance.

If nothing else, C’tair vowed that someone had to know what was happening here. Miral Alechem had been his only glimmer of friendship or emotional warmth, and she had vanished from his life. He feared the worst must have happened to her. . . .

He had to transmit his message, had to find a listener. For all his enthusiasm, Rhombur had not been able to do enough. Perhaps D’murr, with his skills as a Guild Navigator, could locate the long-lost Earl of Ix, Dominic Vernius. . . .

C’tair’s dirty clothes smelled of sweat and grease. His body had been too long without rest or decent food. Hungry, he huddled in the back of an armored storage container that held sealed crates of rejected Ixian chronometers, timepieces that could be programmed to accommodate any planet in the Imperium. The instruments had been set aside for recalibration, and had gathered dust for years. The Tleilaxu had no use for frivolous technological toys.

Working under the dim light of a fading palmglobe, C’tair reassembled the stored components of his rogo transmitter. He felt the ice of fear in his bloodstream, not because he was concerned he might be caught by Tleilaxu snoopers, but because he feared the rogo would not function. It had been a year since he’d tried to use the communications device, and this was his last set of pristine silicate crystal rods.

He wiped a drop of sweat from his shaggy hair and inserted the rods into the receptacle. The battered transmitter had been repaired many times. With each use, C’tair strained the jury-rigged systems— as well as his own brain— to the limit.

As youths, he and his twin had shared a perfect rapport, a brotherly connection that had allowed them to complete each other’s sentences, to look across the room and know what the other sibling was thinking. Sometimes his longing to recapture that empathy was almost too strong to bear.

Since D’murr became a Navigator, the brothers had grown farther and farther apart. C’tair had done his best to maintain that fragile thread, and the rogo transmitter allowed the two minds to find a common ground. But over the years the rogo had faltered, and finally the machine was on the verge of breaking down completely . . . as was C’tair.

He slipped in the last rod, set his jaw with determination, and activated the power source. He hoped the armored walls of the cargo container would prevent any leakage that Tleilaxu scanners could detect. After setting off his explosive wafers two years ago, he no longer had his scan-shielded chamber. As a result, his risks grew greater every day.

Commander Garon and his Sardaukar were searching for him, and others like him, narrowing the possibilities, getting closer.

C’tair placed receptors against his skull, smeared on a dab of gel to improve the contact. In his mind, he tried to summon a connection with D’murr, seeking the thought patterns that had once been so identical to his own. Though they still shared a common origin, D’murr was vastly changed . . . to such a degree that the twins were now almost members of different species.

He sensed a tickle in his consciousness, and then a startled but sluggish recognition.

“D’murr, you must listen to me. You must hear what I am saying.”

He felt a receptiveness in the images, and he saw in his mind the face of his brother, dark-haired, large-eyed, a snub nose, with a pleasant smile. Exactly as C’tair remembered him from their days in the Grand Palais, when they had attended diplomatic functions and both had flirted with Kailea Vernius.

But behind the familiar image, the startled C’tair saw a strange and distorted shape, a gross, startling shadow of his brother with an enlarged cranium and stunted limbs, suspended forever in a tank of rich melange gas.

C’tair drove the image back and focused again on the human face of his twin, whether or not it was real.

“D’murr, this could be the last time we speak.” He wanted to ask his brother for any news of the outside Imperium. What of their father, Ambassador Pilru, in his exile on Kaitain? If alive, the Ambassador was still trying to rally support, C’tair theorized, but after so many years it would be a lost, almost pathetic, cause.

C’tair had no time for chatting. He needed to communicate the urgency and desperation of the Ixian people. All other forms of communication had been cut off— but D’murr, through his Guild connections, had another outlet, a tenuous thread across the cosmos.

Someone must understand how desperate our situation is!

Frantically, C’tair talked at length, describing everything the Tleilaxu had done, listing the horrors inflicted by Sardaukar guards and fanatics upon the captive Ixians.

“You must help me, D’murr. Find someone to take up our cause in the Imperium.” Rhombur Vernius already knew the situation, and though the Prince had done what he could with secret Atreides backing, that had not been enough. “Find Dominic Vernius— he could be our only chance. If you remember me, if you remember your human family and friends . . . your people . . . please help us. You are the only hope we have left.”

In front of him, only half-seeing with his eyes because his mind was so far away, stretched across the paths of foldspace to his brother, C’tair saw smoke curling from the rogo transmitter. The silicate crystal rods began to shiver and crack. “Please, D’murr!”

Seconds later, the rods shattered. Sparks sizzled from cracks in the transmitter, and C’tair tore the connectors from his temples.

He jammed a fist into his mouth to cut off a scream of pain. Tears filled his eyes, squeezed out by the pressure in his brain. He touched his nose, then his ears, and felt blood leaking from ruptures inside his sinuses. He sobbed and bit his knuckles hard, but the agony was a long time subsiding.

Finally, after hours of dazed pain, he looked at the blackened crystals in his transmitter and wiped the blood from his face. Sitting up and waiting for the throbbing to fade, he found himself smiling despite his hurt and the damaged rogo.

He was sure he had gotten through this time. The future of Ix depended on what D’murr could do with the information.