Baron Vladimir Harkonnen had made a lifetime career of seeking new experiences. He dabbled in hedonistic pleasures— rich foods, exotic drugs, deviant sex— discovering things he had never done before.

But a baby in Harkonnen Keep . . . how would he handle that?

Other Houses of the Landsraad adored children. A generation ago, Count Ilban Richese had married an Imperial daughter and spawned eleven offspring. Eleven! The Baron had heard insipid songs and heartwarming tales that fostered a false impression of the joy of laughing children. He had trouble understanding it, but out of duty for his House, for the future of all Harkonnen businesses, he vowed to do his best. He would be a role model for young Feyd-Rautha.

Barely over a year old, the boy had grown too confident in his walking skills, stumbling across rooms, running long before he had total balance, resilient enough to keep going even when he bumped into something. Bright-eyed Feyd had an insatiable curiosity, and he pried into every storage area, every cabinet. He picked up any movable object and usually stuck it in his mouth. The baby startled easily and cried incessantly.

Sometimes the Baron snapped at him, trying to get some sort of response other than gurgling nonsensical words. It was no use.

After breakfast one day he took the child out onto the high balcony of a tall turret of Harkonnen Keep. Little Feyd looked across the crowded industrial city to see the ruddy morning sun through a haze of smoke. Beyond the boundaries of Harko City, mining and agricultural villages produced raw material to keep Giedi Prime functioning. But the populace remained unruly, and the Baron had to exercise tight control, making examples, providing the necessary discipline to keep them in their place.

As the Baron let his thoughts ramble, his attention drifted from the child. Surprisingly fast, Feyd charged with his tiptoe-stumble gait to the edge of the balcony, where he leaned between the rails. The Baron, spluttering in indignant shock, lurched forward. Light yet clumsy under the motivation of his suspensor belt, he snatched the child just before Feyd leaned too far over the deep, deep drop.

He snarled obscenities at the toddler, holding him at eye level. “How can you do such a foolish thing, idiot child? Don’t you understand the consequences? If you fall, you’d be nothing more than a smear on the streets below!”

All that carefully cultivated Harkonnen blood wasted . . .

Feyd-Rautha looked at him wide-eyed, then made a rude sound.

The Baron hustled the boy back inside. As a safety measure, he removed one of the suspensor globes from his own belt and attached it to the child’s back. Though he now walked with a little more difficulty, feeling the strain on his degenerating muscles and heavy arms and legs, at least Feyd was under control. Bobbing along half a meter in the air, the child seemed to find it amusing.

“Come with me, Feyd,” the Baron said. “I want to show you the animals. You’ll enjoy them.”

Feyd drifted along in tow as his uncle plodded, panting and wheezing, through the corridors and down flights of stairs until he reached the arena level. The baby giggled and laughed while he floated along. The Baron nudged his shoulders every few minutes to keep him moving. Feyd’s pudgy little arms and legs waved about as if he were swimming in the air.

In the cage levels surrounding the gladiator arena, Baron Harkonnen lugged the child through low tunnels with sloping ceilings made out of wattle and daub, a primitive stick-and-mud construction that gave the place the feel of an animal’s lair. A rich, moist odor of wildness filled the enclosed tunnels. Barred chambers held rotten hay and manure from creatures bred and trained to fight against the Baron’s chosen victims. The roars and snarls of tortured animals echoed off the walls. Claws scraped on stone floors. Enraged beasts crashed against the bars.

The Baron smiled. It was good to keep predators on edge.

The beasts were a delight to watch; with their teeth, horns, and claws they could tear a man to bloody shreds. Still, the most interesting battles took place between human opponents, professional soldiers against desperate slaves who had been promised freedom, though none ever received it. Any slave who fought well enough to defeat a trained Harkonnen killer was worth keeping around to fight again and again.

As he continued through the dim tunnels, the Baron looked down at the fascinated face of little Feyd. In the child he saw a future full of possibilities, another heir to House Harkonnen who might outperform his blockheaded brother Rabban. That one, while strong and vicious, didn’t have the devious mind the Baron preferred.

His burly nephew was still useful, though. In fact, Rabban had performed many brutal tasks that even the Baron found distasteful. Too often, though, he acted like little more than a . . . muscle-minded tank-brain.

The motley pair stopped at one cage, where a Laza tiger prowled back and forth, its feline pupils narrowed to slits, its triangular nose flaring as it smelled tender flesh and warm blood. These hungry beasts had been favorites in gladiatorial combat for centuries. The tiger was a mass of muscle, every fiber filled with killing energy. Its keepers fed it just enough to maintain its peak strength . . . keeping the tiger ready to feast on the torn flesh of fresh victims.

Suddenly, the beast crashed into the bars of the cage, its dark lips curled and long fangs bared. The abused tiger hurled itself at the barrier again, reaching out a paw filled with saber claws.

Startled, the Baron backed away and yanked Feyd with him. The child, bobbing on his suspensor globe, continued to drift backward until he struck the wall, which startled him more than the roaring predator itself. Feyd wailed with such exuberance that his face turned purple from the effort.

The Baron grasped the child’s shoulders. “There, there,” he said in a brusque but soothing tone. “Be quiet now. It’s all right.” But Feyd continued to shriek, enraging his uncle. “Be quiet, I said! There’s nothing to cry about.”

The baby felt otherwise and continued his loud crying.

The tiger roared and threw himself against the bars, slashing the air.

“Silence, I command!” The Baron didn’t know what to do. He’d never been instructed in how to handle babies. “Oh, stop it!” But Feyd only cried louder.

Oddly, he thought of the two daughters he had sired with the Bene Gesserit witch Mohiam. During his disastrous confrontation with the witches on Wallach IX, seven years ago now, he had demanded to have his children returned, but now he realized how much of a blessing it was that the Reverend Mothers had raised these . . . immature creatures themselves.

“Piter!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, then strode to a com-panel on the wall. He hammered it with his bloated fist. “Piter de Vries! Where’s my Mentat?”

He shouted until the thin nasal voice of the Mentat responded through the speaker. “I am coming, my Baron.”

Feyd continued to cry. When the Baron grasped him again, he found that the baby had filled and soaked his diapers. “Piter!”

Moments later the Mentat scuttled into the tunnels. He must have been close, shadowing the Baron as he always did. “Yes, my Baron?”

As the child wailed without pause for breath, the Baron thrust Feyd into the arms of de Vries. “You take care of him. Make him stop crying.”

Taken completely unawares, the Mentat blinked his feral eyes at the littlest Harkonnen. “But my Baron, I—”

“Do as I command! You’re my Mentat. You’re supposed to know anything I ask you to know.” The Baron clenched his jowly jaw and suppressed an amused smile at de Vries’s discomfiture.

The Mentat held the smelly Feyd-Rautha at arm’s length, grasping the squirming child as if he were some strange specimen. The expression on the thin man’s face was worth all of the distress he had just gone through.

“Don’t fail me, Piter.” The Baron strode away, his gait dragging a bit from the loss of one suspensor globe.

Behind him in the animal tunnels, Piter de Vries held the howling infant with no clue as to how he should proceed.