Riding the Worm

[Paul Atreides]

Muad'dib waited as the shadows grew longer without speaking. His secondaries milled about making preparations. They hadn’t understood yet that the weapons didn’t need maintenance- they were were creations, extensions of his will, like they were. With a brief expenditure of effort would remake or reform those weapons. He’d explained it, in passing, to them but maintenance of their weapons was so much a part of their nature that they didn’t even notice it. It was normality for them and he hadn’t the heart to take that from them as they waited for nightfall.

Turning to Matrix, Paul looked at him with an appraising eye.

“Matrix. I know that the denizens of this world have rather varied capacities and skills. And I suspect that you are capable of a great many things... unless I have counted you wrong you too are a prime. Am I right? I only ask because we are to assault this den of thieves together and we need to know each other’s abilities....” He said almost apologetically.


Paul wasn’t quite sure Matrix wanted his status as a Prime exposed but it was just Paul and his two secondaries. Paul had intentionally revealed that he too was a Prime, but he suspected that Matrix had gleaned that much about him when he had called forth the worm. Still, it was a countasy he was willing to extend. If Matrix was a Prime, like he expected, this mission would be quite easily resolved. Still- knowing the skillset of a teammate was a vital aspect of any plan. And, Paul was quite the planner. He could work out most thing with his mentat brain. (In his universe they had banned almost all digital technology and no networked computers were allowed so they had trained people as human computers- known as mentats.)