To attempt an understanding of Muad' Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood.

It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It can not be. —from"Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

IT WAS A relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings.

The globe sat on a freeform stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes and reels.

Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.

An ellipsoid desk with a top of jade-pink petrified elacca wood stood at the center of the room. Veriform suspensor chairs ringed it, two of them occupied.

In one sat a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes. The other held a slender, short man with effeminate face.

Both youth and man stared at the globe and the man half-hidden in shadows spinning it.

A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: "There it is, Piter—the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke's headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?"

"Assuredly, Baron, "said the man. His voice came out tenor with a sweet, musical quality.