Certainly he reproached himself when he teamed that die Lady Jessica, alive and with her SOB, was not Paul's betrayer, but, like himself, a victim of a devious Harkonnen plot and of the treason of Dr. Yaeh. When the Padishah Emperor and the Reverend Mother Gahis Helen Mohiam summoned him shortly before the captives went to their audience with Paul, Hawat knew it meant treachery. He accepted the tiny poisoned needle without a word, too weak to nod his head as the emperor commanded him to use it against the "iipstart Duke." When he saw Gurney Hal leek checking the entourage entering the Great Hall for weapons, Hawat used the old hand signs to tell him that, thinking Paul was dead, he had been working with the Harkonnens and to request that he be left with &e group-to avert, no doubt, any move that might be made against Paul. Afid Ihcfi Paul called him out and greeted him as "old friend," As Hawat obeyed his beloved Duke for the last time, he surely knew mat Paul was aware of the needle and certain that Hawat had no intention of using it against him. In her account of the scene, the Princess Iiuian writes mat Paul and Hawat whispered together for a few moments before Paul reached out to support Hawat by the shoulders. And then, she records, Hawat turned in a magnificent gesture to face the emperor, extended his left hand, palm up, to expose the needle cupped against his fingers, and said, "See, Majesty? See your traitor's needle'.' Did you think that I who've given my life to service to the Atreides would give mem less now?" With mat last act of supreme defiance proclaiming his inviolable loyalty to the Atreides, Hawat sagged in death against Paul and slumped to the floor. Hawat's Duke then paid his faithful servant, the Mental who had served three generations of Atreides, his final honor: he gave, the order to have Hawat's body carried away and treated with all the respect of a hero of the tribe. O.K. Further references: MENTAT entries; Princess Irulan Atreides-Comno, Arrolds Awakening, tr Zhaulya Muuraz-faarat, AS 15 (.Grumman- United Worlds); A.L. Rouse, The Education of a Mental, tr Get Dawlej (Loomar Coei Institute); Marya von Wikkheiser, House Harkonnen, tr. Aiazrii Pezh, SAH 76 (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Frcmen Culture), Lady Jessica, The Years onArrakis, tr. Zhaivz Aultan (Caladan: Apex) HEKjHLJNER. The primary interstellar transport of the Spacing Guild. Although they varied somewhat in size and detail of design, all heighliners were fast, difficult to maneuver, enormous and powered by the Holtzman Effect. Because of their size and the extreme complexity of the external neutrino circuitry which effected the trans-hght displacements, heighliners were expensive and difficult to build. Even at the height of its dominance, the Guild had no more than five thousand heighliners. But these great ships were remarkably durable and, like so many elements of the Imperium, almost immune to technological obsolescence.