Proliferation of Thoughts
By 3005, Dune had wormed its way into the Taurian Concordat in the most insidious manner possible: through intellectual circles and the kind of stubborn, well-read academics who hated that it had come from Davion space.
It had not been banned, of course. The Concordat was too proud of its literacy, too self-assured in its cultural superiority, to suppress a book simply because it originated in enemy territory. No, the problem with Dune wasn't that it was Davion propaganda.
The problem was that it was too damned good to dismiss out of hand.
And that was infuriating.
The first copies had trickled in through academic and literary channels, smuggled in among the usual flow of off-world books. The more orthodox among the Concordat's intellectual elite had sniffed at it, dismissing it as yet another attempt by Davion culture to project some grand narrative of noble heroism.
Then they read it.
And they kept reading.
And suddenly, a whole generation of Taurian scholars had a problem.
Here was a novel—a piece of fiction, no less—that did not extol the glories of an expanding, hegemonic empire. It did not celebrate the march of manifest destiny or the triumphant rise of some Davion-esque ruler to a golden age of rational governance. No, this was a book about resistance, about survival, about a people who had been ground under the heel of a larger empire and refused to die.
It was, in many ways, too Taurian for comfort.
The officers of the Taurian Defense Force, however, were less conflicted.
To them, Dune was a strategic primer wrapped in mythology. The lessons were clear:
Never fight an enemy on their terms.Leverage home-field advantage.Technology does not win wars—belief does.A small but determined force, properly motivated and disciplined, could break a numerically and technologically superior foe.The parallels were immediate and obvious. Paul Atreides and the Fremen had waged a guerrilla war against an empire that had crushed them underfoot for its own convenience. And how had they won? By turning the desert itself into a weapon. By embracing the fanaticism that the empire could not comprehend.
The military academies of Taurus had already studied asymmetrical warfare extensively. Every Taurian officer was expected to understand how to fight the Federated Suns in conditions where the Suns had superior numbers, logistics, and technology. Dune was, in effect, a case study in exactly that kind of warfare.
More than one officer found themselves considering, with grim amusement, the notion that the Taurians had more in common with the Fremen than they ever would with House Davion's polished elites.
Then, inevitably, the politicians got involved.
To the staunchest of Taurian nationalists, Dune was a trap. It had come from Davion space. That alone made it suspect. But even worse, it was compelling. It was too well written. It sucked you in, made you sympathize with its characters, made you question things. And in a state as fiercely independent as the Concordat, that was dangerous.
Some tried to discredit it. There were accusations that the book was, in fact, a veiled piece of Davion psychological warfare, an attempt to plant subversive thoughts in the minds of Taurians, to make them doubt their stance. Others argued that Dune was proof that even in Davion space, some people understood the evils of empire.
But the problem was that too many loved it.
Intellectuals defended it fiercely. Yes, it had come from Davion space, but that didn't mean it was tainted. Hadn't the Taurians always prided themselves on being the most literate society in the Inner Sphere? Hadn't they always challenged themselves with difficult ideas?
A few particularly bold voices even began drawing direct comparisons between the Taurians and the Fremen.
They whispered that maybe the Taurians were the Fremen of the Inner Sphere—hardened by exile, forged by struggle, unbroken despite overwhelming odds. That maybe, just maybe, they should lean into that identity.
And that was when things got truly interesting.
If the Taurian elite had found themselves reluctantly entranced by Dune, the common people of the Concordat reacted in a far more visceral, far more emotional manner.
For them, Dune was validation.
When the book filtered down from scholars and officers into the hands of the general populace, it spread like wildfire.
Miners on the ore-rich moons of Flannagan's Nebula passed around dog-eared copies during shifts. Farmers working the dust-choked plains of New Vallis whispered about the Fremen and their desert survival techniques. Dockworkers in Samantha City, who had seen too many supply convoys headed toward another border skirmish with House Davion, drank toasts to the stubborn defiance of the Atreides.
The Concordat had always fostered a deep, almost cultural resentment against the Federated Suns. To the average Taurian, the Davions were everything they despised: expansionist, arrogant, and self-righteous. But Dune painted a picture that Taurians recognized in their bones:
A people, exiled and crushed under the weight of a larger empire.
A brutal, uncaring enemy with superior resources.
A struggle not just for survival, but for dignity.
It was a mirror to the Taurian soul.
"House Atreides," one farmer was quoted as saying in a small, local newspaper, "might as well have been the Concordat. And the Harkonnens? That's the Davions, right there."
Even those who recognized that the comparison wasn't perfect couldn't shake the feeling that Dune was the Taurian story in all but name.
And so, the book became something more. It was read aloud in taverns and homesteads. It was debated in underground political meetings. It was felt in the bones of the people who had long lived under the specter of Davion aggression.
And once that feeling had settled in, it could not be undone.
For the Far Lookers, the book was nothing short of a revelation.
The Far Lookers—Taurian idealists who believed the Concordat should renew its exploration and expansion into the Deep Periphery—had long been dismissed as dreamers, even by their own government. To most, their ideas of founding new colonies and reclaiming a golden age of Taurian exploration were fanciful, impractical in an age where House Davion loomed as a constant threat.
But Dune?
Dune gave them a blueprint.
Paul Atreides had fled into the desert, into exile, and emerged stronger. The Fremen had been cast-offs, forgotten by the great powers of the Imperium, yet had survived and thrived where others would have perished.
Was that not the Far Looker dream in its purest form?
To go beyond the borders, beyond the known, and carve out a future where the Taurians could not just survive, but define their own destiny?
More than one Far Looker leader seized upon the book as a rallying cry.
"If Paul Muad'Dib could forge a new order beyond the empire," one impassioned speech at a Far Looker gathering declared, "then why can't we? If the Fremen could build a new civilization, why not the Taurians beyond the Reach?"
And for the first time in decades, the Far Lookers saw a genuine surge in recruitment.
Even the more practical among them, the ones who understood the logistical nightmare of launching large-scale colonization efforts in the Periphery, recognized that something had changed.
For the first time in a long time, the Taurians had a mythology that spoke of exile as strength, of isolation as power.
And from that, the Far Lookers began to quietly, methodically, plan.
The Inner Sphere was a cursed palce of blood and death. Only through the deep void far away would they find purer and untouched paradises to live and grow without the spectre of the Star League.
And this was what had landed Juan in trouble with a maverick agent who smelled trouble.
It was debated in universities. It was analyzed in war colleges. It was referenced in political discourse, sometimes in earnest and sometimes with bitter irony. There were radicals who saw it as a rallying cry, pragmatists who viewed it as a useful study of resistance, and cynics who thought it was overrated nonsense that gave people too many ideas.
To the scholars, it was a masterwork that could not be ignored, despite its Davion origins.
To the military, it was a case study in resistance and asymmetrical warfare.
To the common folk, it was the story of their lives, wrapped in the language of legend.
To the Far Lookers, it was a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled.
Even the Protector himself was rumored to have a copy in his personal library.
But no one, no one, ignored it.
And as Taurian strategists and politicians continued to grapple with its meaning, a single idea began to spread among certain elements of the Concordat's military and political class:
"We are the Fremen of the Inner Sphere."
It was not yet doctrine.
Not yet a slogan.
But for the first time, the Taurians had something they had not possessed in a long time.
A mythology that worked for them, instead of against them.
And that, perhaps, was the most dangerous thing of all.
===
Marion Valois leaned back on a plush divan, the cool evening breeze carrying the scent of exotic spices through the open-air lounge of the Orchid Pavilion. The Magistracy of Canopus had many such places: opulent, serene, dedicated to pleasure in all its myriad forms but tonight, the conversation was anything but idle.
"Dune, my dear," whispered Kalista Merenz, a noted poet and playwright, swirling a glass of ruby-red Mycosian wine. "It is… intoxicating."
The book had arrived in the Magistracy much as anything else did—on the winds of trade, drifting in alongside silks, rare perfumes, and holo-reels of imported dramas. Canopian merchants had picked up copies from New Avalon, thinking little of the heavy tome other than its Davion origin. That alone would have been enough to ensure some level of curiosity.
Dune was no mere book.
It had not merely entered the Magistracy, it had seduced the nation with intriguing concepts that resonated with their culture and mores.
Marion chuckled, lazily turning a page of her own leather-bound copy. "And what, dear Kalista, do you find so intoxicating? The philosophy? The intrigue? Or is it simply that Paul Atreides reminds you of one of your younger lovers?"
Kalista gave a wicked smile. "Oh, I do love a tragic prince. But no, it is not Paul I admire. It is his mother." She tapped the book lightly. "Jessica. That woman knew power. Not the crude, masculine strength, but true power. She knew when to speak and when to be silent. When to bend and when to stand unyielding."
Across the lounge, a young courtesan overheard the conversation and let out an appreciative sigh. "I adored the Bene Gesserit," she gushed. "Such grace, such control. It was like watching the courtiers of Crimson Hall, but taken to the absolute peak of perfection!"
As the evening wore on in the Orchid Pavilion, Marion Valois closed the book with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Tell me, Kalista," she mused, "do you think a man like Paul Atreides would have thrived here, in the Magistracy?"
Kalista laughed, rich and full. "Oh, my dear, he would have been devoured."
She took a slow sip of her wine, then added, "But his mother? Jessica?"
A knowing smile.
"She would have ruled."
And there it was. The first thread of Dune's entanglement with Canopian culture.
To the people of the Magistracy, Dune was not a tale of war or conquest. It was a study of power, wrapped in the silken veils of mysticism and whispered secrets. The Bene Gesserit, in particular, had enraptured the Canopian elite, their training and manipulation striking an immediate chord with the powerful women who maneuvered through the labyrinthine courts of Canopus IV.
The very idea of an ancient sisterhood, guiding history through careful breeding and subtle influence, resonated with the noble houses and the Matron-Clans of the pleasure industry alike. Already, whispers circulated through the courtiers and salons. Some women took to calling themselves Reverend Mothers in jest, though the jest was wearing thin as more and more of them adopted Bene Gesserit-inspired philosophies in earnest.
Even the temples of the Sacred Band took notice. Dune's deep, almost mystical reverence for the desert and the spiritual journey of suffering and transformation struck a note with the warrior-priestesses who upheld Canopus's martial traditions. Some began quoting from Dune in their sermons.
"Survival is the ultimate test of worth," intoned Priestess-General Anaya Arbatov during a training exercise. "Is that not the way of the Fremen? Is that not our own way?"
Meanwhile, in the studios and theaters of Canopus IV, something else was taking shape.
The artists, always drawn to the grand and the provocative, had devoured Dune with a passion. Soon, the book's ideas of fate, prophecy, and power games were being woven into stage performances and dramatized holo-productions.
The Imperial Masque, one of the Magistracy's most famous theater troupes, had already begun production on Muad'Dib: The Shadow of Destiny. It promised to be a breathtaking performance—lavish costumes, intricate dances, and an entire section devoted to the strange, mesmerizing movements of the Bene Gesserit, choreographed to hypnotic music.
It was one of the first derivative amateur works to be given a professional treatment with the budget and quality of actors and staff working on it.
"The seduction of power," the director proclaimed, "must be shown as an art form, not a contest of brute force."
And in this, the Canopians saw something the other Great Houses had missed.
Where the Taurians had seen a reflection of their suffering…
Where the Davions had debated its lessons on leadership…
Where the Steiners had studied its business…
The Canopians had felt Dune's pulse in their veins.
It was a story of masks behind masks, of pleasure laced with danger, of rulers who whispered when others shouted. It was the kind of story the Magistracy had always known, but never written in such exquisite, foreign prose.
When word of Dune's cultural impact reached the highest echelons of Canopian leadership, the Magestrix herself took interest.
Tamara Centrella, ever the pragmatist, was said to have read the book in private before discussing it with her closest advisors. Some believed she had found the portrayal of the Bene Gesserit amusing. Others thought she had taken a particular interest in the political maneuvering of the Padishah Emperor.
But those closest to her noted something else entirely.
After finishing Dune, Tamara had spent long hours in the palace's private library, reviewing historical records, contemplating old strategic reports. When she emerged, her orders were simple but far-reaching:
First, increase intelligence operations within the Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League.
Second, expand Canopian diplomatic overtures to smaller Periphery states.
Third, last and most important, to begin a quiet, subtle push for an elite order of women trained in courtly influence, intelligence gathering, and persuasion. Something akin to the Bene Gesserit, but tailored for the Magistracy's unique strengths.
She never openly admitted the connection between her new initiatives and the novel, but the courtiers whispered nonetheless.
Dune had given her ideas.
===
The book arrived on the Outworlds' soil not with great fanfare, nor as a whispered treasure smuggled in by spies. Instead, it came like all things did in this failing state—by sheer accident, carried in the packs of a wandering merchant or a jaded mercenary who had picked up a copy in a Davion garrison town.
To the average settler on Alpheratz, it was little more than a curiosity at first. The Outworlds Alliance, a nation that prided itself on agrarian simplicity and self-reliance, had little time for sprawling epics of interstellar feudalism. The common farmer eking out a life under failing hydroponic domes and battered weather shelters had greater concerns than the rise and fall of distant, fictional empires.
But the Omniss?
They took notice immediately.
Though the government of the Alliance was nominally independent, in truth, the Omniss dictated much of its policy. Their disdain for advanced technology, their insistence that mankind had flown too close to the sun, had shaped the Outworlds into what it was: a broken remnant of a failing state, now held together by little more than stubborn will and fervent belief.
So when Dune spread, as all powerful ideas must, it was only a matter of time before it reached the High Clerics of the Omniss.
And there, in the candle-lit halls of whispered devotions, the book took root.
At first, the reaction was predictable.
Outrage.
Condemnation.
The novel was a Davion import, filled with strange heresies and dangerous thoughts. It spoke of a Chosen One, of a messianic figure who would rise amid hardship and suffering to lead his people to salvation.
It spoke of a desert faith, of a people who found strength in privation, who rejected machines, who lived simply yet knew secrets beyond the reach of kings.
The comparisons were unavoidable.
To the Omniss, the Fremen were a reflection of themselves, twisted and distorted in a mirror of fiction. Paul Atreides was both temptation and warning of a prophet who brought his people to greatness, yet also their downfall. They were too much like the Omniss themselves, and the parallel disturbed the more thoughtful among their ranks.
It was clear, then, why the book had to be suppressed.
But that was the problem with Dune.
Once it had been read, it could not be unread.
The suppression order came swiftly. Copies were confiscated. Public readings were denounced. The book was labeled subversive, dangerous—yet the damage had already been done.
Because Dune did not need a printing press to spread. It only needed voices.
And the voices whispered.
The Omniss had always relied on control: control of knowledge, control of the past, control of the faithful. The Omniss had spent generations cultivating their own doctrines, preaching a return to simpler times, a rejection of the mechanized world that had led to such ruin. Their power was built on the notion that technology was a temptation, a creeping corruption that distanced mankind from the purity of toil and faith.
But Dune had given its people a new way of thinking.
Some of the younger generation and initiates saw the book not as blasphemy, but as instruction. Had they not suffered as the Fremen had? Had they not endured hardship, exile, and technological starvation? And if Paul Atreides could reshape an empire with prophecy and faith, what might the Omniss do with such knowledge?
Even more dangerously, certain outlying sects, those who had long chafed under the dogma of rejection began to question. The world of Dune was brutal, yes, but was it weak? The Fremen had fought and bled, but they had not withered. They had thrived, adapted, turned their suffering into strength.
Was not Arrakis made to train the faithful?
Was that not what the Outworlds Alliance needed?
At first, the book circulated in secret, passed hand to hand in dog-eared copies, its words whispered in candlelit gatherings among those who could read and those who longed to hear. The Fremen, those desert-dwelling warriors who bent the cruelty of Arrakis to their will, spoke to the rugged frontier spirit that had once defined the Alliance. Their suffering under the yoke of the Imperium, their whispered prophecies of a messiah, felt like echoes of the Outworlders' own lamentations under the boots of Davion and Kurita alike.
And yet, there was the Kwisatz Haderach. A being who could see all paths, who could bend prophecy to his will and yet be bound by its chains.
The debates raged in hushed, solemn circles. The Omniss elders convened in hidden conclaves, seeking to decipher whether this book was a revelation or a warning. Was Paul Atreides an instrument of divine will, or the ultimate heretic, reshaping the universe with hubris rather than humility? Was his jihad an inevitability, or the consequence of an empire placing too much faith in a single man?
Among the laypeople, the book spread like wildfire. The younger generation, those who had begun to chafe under the constraints of Omniss doctrine, saw in Paul Atreides a symbol of defiance, of embracing destiny rather than surrendering to it. They muttered of change, of shaking off the old ways, of making the Alliance into something more than a footnote in history. Some spoke of their own prophecy, of a leader yet to come who would lead them from decay into a new era.
Paul Atreides has survived and with a will thrived like no other. He had defied the great houses, turned oppression into revolution, and seized his destiny. That vision, that possibility, took root in minds already restless with discontent. The Alliance was failing.
The Omniss had kept the people shackled to an ideal of simplicity, of rejecting the march of technology, but what had it brought them?
Poverty. Stagnation. The slow decay of a nation that could not stand on its own.
They needed someone to lead them out of the darkness.
Yet who?
Who was this Messiah, and how would he come?
For the politicians of Alpheratz, the book was both a curse and an opportunity. Some sought to suppress it, fearing that its ideas would erode what little stability remained. Others saw it as a chance to galvanize a population that had long since resigned itself to decline.
Others feared the opposite. The Omniss held the loyalty of many, but the book was planting new ideas, and ideas had a way of spreading beyond any attempt to contain them.
The ruling government of the Alliance, such as it was, had no way to truly gauge the storm that was brewing. For on the frontier worlds, in the crumbling settlements where survival itself was a constant struggle, a shift was taking place.
No longer was privation seen as simply a burden to endure. It was a trial, a forging.
And those who survived it? They were the strong.
Arrakis need not be a place. It could be an ideal, and the frontier worlds of the OWA were slowly starting to believe that their struggles, their poverty, their tribulations under pirate and mercenary raids were virtues to make them strong and resilient just as it had the Fremen.
And they were not in a deadly desert where they lacked water and sustenance!
Among the more radical splinter sects of the Omniss, the whispers took an even darker turn. The novel's depiction of the Fremen Jihad, of a coming a religious war that reshaped the galaxy and set in stone, did not go unnoticed.
For years, the Outworlds had been on the defensive, shrinking before the might of the Inner Sphere, ceding ground, losing population and worlds in the name of pacifism and believing in the better nature of man.
Perhaps, some reasoned, that was the mistake.
Perhaps it was time to stop retreating.
===
The world of Niops had long been an enigma to the wider Inner Sphere. Isolated, secretive, and possessing a technological sophistication far beyond its modest resources, the Niops Association had survived the Succession Wars through careful husbandry of its knowledge and an unyielding dedication to scientific progress. And now, with the introduction of Dune into its cultural consciousness, the people of Niops found themselves staring into a literary mirror.
There was something deeply familiar in the genetic manipulations of the Bene Tleilax, their secretive traditions, and their willingness to pursue knowledge no matter how esoteric, no matter how repugnant it might seem to others. The Tleilaxu, much like Niops, had persisted on the fringes, reviled and underestimated by the great powers of their universe, yet crucial in ways those powers failed to grasp until it was too late.
The Tleilaxu were isolationists, secretive masters of biological science, distrusted by the great powers of their universe, yet indispensable to them. Their genetic manipulation, their willingness to push beyond conventional morality in the name of advancement.
These were things Niops had long contemplated in hushed discussions.
A particularly controversial discussion arose around the concept of the Kwisatz Haderach. Could a form of selective breeding, combined with the advanced knowledge of Niops' research divisions, create a supreme leader, perhaps even a supreme scientist capable of guiding Niops into a new golden age?
Was such an idea insanity, or was it merely another tool in the arsenal of progress?
Would it be so bad to create a leader from the ground up with all the positives already biologically and genteically encoded rather than wait upon capricious luck and the uncertainties of fate?
At the heart of these debates was an unspoken fear: that Niops, like the Tleilaxu, might become so consumed by secrecy, by scientific isolation, that they would become irrelevant to the grander currents of history.
For all the Tleilaxu's machinations, they had remained in the shadows, manipulating but never truly leading, always distrusted, always an outsider force. Niops' leaders saw themselves in that fate.
The book had forced a question upon them: Was the path of the Tleilaxu a cautionary tale, or a blueprint for survival?
Some saw it as an affirmation of their path. If the great powers of the Inner Sphere treated Niops as an afterthought, an irrelevance, then perhaps they should embrace it. Let them be the hidden hand, the keepers of lost technology, the silent architects of the future. Why not develop genetic programs tailored to produce scientific prodigies? Why not reshape their dwindling population into something greater?
The parallels were impossible to ignore.
For the ruling technocrats and scientists of Niops, Dune was an affirmation and perhaps even a warning. They had long understood the dangers of secrecy and the power of knowledge.
In their labs, they too walked the fine line between scientific advancement and ethical peril. The Bene Tleilax's transformation of knowledge into a form of economic and political currency was something the leaders of Niops had often considered: if they could develop an unassailable monopoly on key forms of lost technology, would it ensure their survival?
Or would it damn them?
Paul Atreides had seized control of the most valuable resource in his universe and used it to dictate the future. What was Niops' equivalent of melange? What technology, what secret knowledge did they possess that could elevate them from obscurity?
The scientists debated furiously. Some argued that their technological expertise was already the key: that their understanding of lost technologies was enough to make them indispensable. Others dismissed this as naive.
Knowledge was not power unless it was leveraged.
The Atreides had not merely controlled the spice; they had used it as a weapon in the Great Game of the Houses.
This made them re-examine the nearest organization that was already doing it: Comstar.
Did they not hold all the keys of interstellar communications across the Inner Sphere? And did not everyone who needed a lifeline of information trust them and their "neutrality" in disseminating those communiques no matter the political affiliation and the content of the information?
They charged quite the prices for their HPGs; even minted their own interstellar currency in the form of C-Bills and made everyone thank them for it.
The Tleilaxu were not the only ones in Dune to capture Niops' imagination. The Fremen, the desert-dwelling warriors who had taken a barren world and turned it into a crucible of strength spoke to a different part of the Niopian psyche.
The people of Niops had been abandoned once. They had been left to die when the Star League collapsed, left to wither on a handful of barely habitable worlds. They had survived through careful stewardship of their resources, through discipline and self-reliance. Was that not the essence of the Fremen?
Could the uncaring world of Niops be the Arrakis to train the faithful?
The desert warriors had been mocked by the great powers of their universe until they rose as an unstoppable force. Was that Niops' destiny? Was the Association merely waiting for its own Muad'Dib, its own leader to emerge and unite them in a great reckoning?
The younger generation, the students and intellectuals, seized on this idea with fervor. They saw in Dune a call to action, a belief that they were more than forgotten exiles. Some even began to adopt Fremen terms in their academic circles, referring to Niops' isolated enclaves as "sietches," romanticizing their struggle as part of a grander narrative.
One thing was certain: Dune had shaken Niops to its core. For the first time in generations, they were looking beyond their own isolation, beyond their careful stewardship of knowledge, and asking what came next.
Was their destiny to be the Tleilaxu, hidden and manipulating from the shadows?
Or were they the Fremen, waiting for their moment to rise?
Or were they something else entirely, something not yet written?
===
While the rest of the Periphery was getting world-shaking revelations from a mere fictional novel, an influential person was having more mundane problems in New Avalon City.
Gregory Vance had made his fortune the old-fashioned way through a combination of ruthless business acumen, knowing the right people, and having a nose for what the public wanted before they even knew it themselves. His studio, Avalon Pictures, had been responsible for some of the biggest holovids in the Federated Suns, from sweeping war dramas to the kind of high-budget action spectacles that made planetary governors sign off on increased entertainment subsidies.
But Dune… Dune was different.
The book had exploded like a DropShip crash into the cultural landscape. It had started as a curiosity, as some deep philosophical work wrapped in adventure and mysticism, a relic of Old Terra reintroduced to the modern age.
But the more people read it, the more it spread.
It became a phenomenon.
Fan conventions, stage productions, even music adaptations were springing up in amateur circles. Entire academic conferences were being organized around it.
And now the studio heads, the marketing executives, and most importantly, the investors all saw what he saw.
This was the book.
A Dune holovid, done right, could be the biggest cultural event in decades. He could already picture it: sweeping desert landscapes, towering palaces, the thunderous sound of massive sandworms devouring spice harvesters. The noble grandeur of Duke Leto, the tragic brilliance of Paul Atreides, the scheming machinations of the Bene Gesserit—this was the kind of thing that could catapult Avalon Pictures to untouchable heights.
And he would be the man to make it happen.
Except for one small problem.
Juan Holtzman.
No one knew where he was.
Holtzman had appeared like a comet, burning bright in the literary world, and then vanished into thin air.
Oh, there were rumors. The usual conspiracy theories that followed any artist who refused to bask in the limelight. Some claimed he had been taken into the First Prince's personal employ as one of those eccentric geniuses that rulers kept around to amuse them.
Others whispered darker theories, that some organizations and even other nations had silenced him for reasons unknown.
Gregory didn't care about the rumors. What he cared about was securing the rights.
Legally, he could just go ahead and start production. As long as he wasn't using the exact words of the book, he could make an "inspired by" adaptation and argue it in court later.
But his legal team had been blunt: It would be a disaster.
Dune wasn't just a story anymore. It was an idea. It had become something personal to people, a myth reborn in the minds of scholars, soldiers, and statesmen alike. If he tried to brute-force a holovid without Holtzman's approval, without his creative involvement, it would be cultural suicide and bomb the box office thoroughly it would held up as a shining examples in textbooks everywhere.
The backlash could sink his entire studio. The kind of backlash that would make even planetary nobles look twice before investing in his productions again or take it off him for its own good.
And considering how much political weight Dune was generating, the crucifixion his advisors warned him about might not even be metaphorical.
That left only one option: Find Holtzman. Get his approval.
Easier said than done.
Gregory had already dispatched every private investigator he could trust. His people had scoured the usual channels—publishers, book agents, even the damned academics who were putting on Dune symposia in New Avalon's universities. Nothing.
Holtzman was gone.
Which meant it was time to escalate.
Gregory wasn't a fool. If Holtzman had vanished from the public eye, it meant one of two things: either he wanted to disappear, or he'd been made to disappear. And the only person in the Federated Suns who could have done the latter was First Prince Ian Davion.
It was a risk, of course.
Ian Davion was a busy man, and approaching him over something as trivial as a holovid adaptation might be seen as ridiculous, even insulting. But the truth was, Gregory had an angle.
Dune was a Davion cultural achievement now. It had taken root in the heart of the Federated Suns. And if House Davion had any interest in cultural prestige (and Gregory knew they did) then turning Dune into a great holovid would be a crown jewel in their artistic legacy.
If Ian Davion did know where Holtzman was, then perhaps an official request, perhaps even a favor offered in return... it could open the right doors.
Of course, this was a gamble. But that was the entertainment business.
Gregory took a deep breath, reached for his datapad, and composed a carefully worded message.
It wasn't every day you asked the ruler of the Federated Suns for permission to turn a book into a movie