The room may also be larger than would fit between the adjacent rooms. Inside there's a window on the wall the door is on with exploding stars visible through it.

There's an unfamiliar man who looks maybe in his 50s at a table. He looks up as Paul runs in. His clothes are well made but plain in a way Paul might not have seen before. Undyed fabrics with simple cuts. The man's movements seem maybe a bit heavy or unpracticed.

He addresses the man "Do you happen to know what this place is, sir?"

"According to the bar it's called Milliways. And while you're here with the door closed, time is paused back in your universe."

That would be... convenient.

Can they trust this person? His body language says that he believes what he said to be true, but still.

Paul looks at his mother.

She gestures with her hand :Truth:, and then :Be wary:.

Should he tell them that Milliways also translates sign language? And how did she determine he was telling the truth. Both questions worthy of some thought. She could of course just be a good reader of people like he is but he wouldn't be that confident in such a novel context. Then again, most people aren't as thoughtful as him. "Would you be willing to tell me more about your universe? The Bar says they can vary quite a bit."

"We may, yes. The bar can... talk?"

He holds up a napkin, one of several arrayed on the table in front of him. It has "Welcome to Milliways, the first drink is free." written in it if they have particularly good vision.

"She'll produce napkins with text written on them in response to questions."

He tries asking... the room? "Would you happen to know how did we get here?"

A napkin appears on the bar. "The door replaces where doors would normally go for reasons nobody I'm aware of has been able to predict."

Did the napkin just... appear?

Breathe in. Breathe out. Center yourself.

"You'll have to excuse my terrible manners. Before we came through the door we were being chased by warriors sent to kill us. That had us on the edge, but it appears to be true that they are not coming through the door, therefore we probably have some time and I should properly introduce myself.

I am Paul Atreides." - an almost imperceptible hesitation, and then - "Twenty-first Duke Atreides.

This is my mother, Lady Jessica."

He extends his hand towards the stranger.

Pham has ever shaken hands before it's a thing in some customer cultures. Paul's hand looks like it's oriented for that so he sits up and shakes the hand. "Pham Nuwen. I'm an armsman for the Qeng Ho. I don't expect you have those in your world though."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance. It is indeed the first time I hear about the Qeng Ho, who are they?"

"We're traders. We travel to find the things that make each world unique, take that into ourselves and preserve it against the travails of time." And the inevitable collapse of planetary civilizations. But maybe if he wins, maybe they can be more.

"That seems like a noble purpose, being the memory of humanity's variety. You said you're an armsman, what weapons are you proficient in?" and would you be any help against the Sardaukar.

"I'm most comfortable with space combat. I haven't fought on a planet's surface in quite some time. Still, I know how to use projectile weapons to a fair degree of proficiency and I have some hand to hand skill."

Space combat! His society must be truly different for that to be his specialization. And projectile weapons!

"What kind of projectile weapons? They are mostly unused on my world, because of shields. Do you have shields?"

"Wire guns, dart guns, and the like. As for shields, not unless you mean physical barriers people hold."

So no lasguns, interesting.

He activates his shield. It visibly surrounds him in a semi-transparent layer.

"You can try to punch me on the shoulder. As long as you try to do it quickly you will fail. That's why we don't really use guns anymore, where I come from."

"I'll take your word for it. I'm not quite adjusted to moving in full gravity at the moment. Fighting in the main bar is also against the rules."

He deactivates the shield.

"What do you use for traveling vast distances? I'm guessing you wouldn't have Guild navigators like we do."

"Our starships use ramscoops and coldsleep. It takes decades or even centuries to cross between the stars."

Oh. There goes his hope of finding a way around the Guild.

"How can you keep your civilization together if commerce is so... slow?"

"Planetary civilizations always collapse. Sometimes enough people survive to rebuild and redevelop technology. Other times, they are not that lucky. It's my dream to change that. As yet I haven't succeeded."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"With enough ships and enough coordination we can prevent civilizations from falling. I've done it a couple times. The difficulty is the cost and being there at the right time. Having an edge can help make that easier, can help reduce the costs. Maybe enough to bring the dream into reality. Sometimes though the cost of having an edge is itself too high. And the only edge I presently know of has a terrible cost. Perhaps I'll meet someone here with a better one."

"Our civilization possesses faster-than-light ships. They are all controlled by the Guild, and transport is expensive, but they exist."

So that failed dream isn't failed everywhere. "Do you know how they work or how they're made?"

"The Guild keeps most details a secret. What is known is that its navigators, through the use of the Spice Melange that gives them limited prescience, fold space to shorten the way between two points.

It would be an impossible task for normal humans, and that's why the Guild was founded after the Butlerian Jihad."

"Prescience is also regarded as impossible in my world. What was The Butlerian Jihad?"

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Humanity had created machines that could think, and that were making us delegate our thinking and corroding our society, so a great revolt started until the last thinking machine was destroyed."

That... sounds like an edge more useful and potentially less fraught than focus. Pham wonders why that worked for them and has failed for millennia in his universe. "I see. You're welcome to take a seat or take some time to get refreshments from the bar. The first drink is free and apparently she will accept any form of currency or readily tradable valuables for further comestibles."

"I wonder if... Bar, could I have a Melange Chai?"

They sit at Nuwen's table.

An ornately decorated mug appears on the surface of the bar. It's steaming just a little.

Interesting. He smells it. Yes, it is proper Spice.

"Since then, we have replaced thinking machines in spaceships with Guild navigators, and calculators with Mentats, who are humans trained from young age to think clearly and quickly, remember facts, and analyze data."

Pham can't help but let a little of his surprise show on his face. They have starships without using even calculators. "How interesting. What is involved in training these Mentats?" They sound a little like Focused people.

"It's... not widely shared. But it's mostly what you would expect, exercise to sharpen the mind and body."

"Understandable. How independent are Mentats? It sounds like a very useful set of abilities, I would expect that to lead people to leadership positions."

"They usually take the role of key advisors, not leaders. Each Lord of the Great Houses has at least one in His employ."

"That makes it sound like there aren't very many Mentats. Is that the case?"

"It is. It's rare for person to have the potential to become one. It takes mental discipline and rigorous training."

Pham really doesn't understand how you would manage a large civilization like that. "What's the overall structure of your society? You mentioned great houses are those large merchant houses or nobles or something else?" He's betting on nobles just based on their titles and bearing.

"There are three main powers in known space: the Landsraad - the assembly of noble Houses, the Padishah Emperor and the Spacing Guild. They balance each other, preventing excesses.

What about where you come from? I'm guessing it's less centralized, based on what you told us about space travel."

"That would be an understatement. The Qeng Ho communications net is the closest thing to a centralized structure that exists. We set it up to help civilizations recover faster after falls and to make the civilizations that do recover more compatible with our systems and more likely to speak our language so trade is easier."

"How does it work? Do you just leave satellites around worlds, hoping that future civilizations will find a way to contact them?

How... old are you?"

"We invest in interstellar transmitters and when a civilization reinvents radio they can pick up those transmissions. As for myself, I've lived a bit under 6000 megaseconds but between coldsleep and relativity it's been around 300 gigaseconds now since I was born."

"Could you count out ten seconds for me, please?" Whatever this place is doing for translating the language has probably picked up the correct definition of "second", but he has never heard anyone refer to long periods of time as "gigaseconds", and it's very cheap to test.

If it's the same "second" though... 6000 megaseconds would be 100 megaminutes would be ~50% more than 1 megahour - 1000 kilohours, would be ~20% less than 50 kilodays, which is... approximately 150 years. Minus 20% plus 50% that's approximately 180 years. And Nuwen didn't seem to know about the spice.

Interesting.

Pham decides it would be best not to get out a terminal and does his best to count out ten seconds based on his own sense of time. "It's at least a little like that. I don't know if you have an Earth or if it's solar system was substantially the same but there were about 31 and a half megaseconds in a year there."

"We did have a planet called Earth, thousands of years ago..." 86400 seconds in a day by 365 days is... "and yes, 31 and a half megaseconds sounds about right for a Standard Year."

Weird. That's probably not a coincidence.

"So you are... 180 Standard Years old? Most of our population doesn't get half that." Unless you have access to the Spice, that is.

"With good medical care, Qeng Ho can expect as many as two hundred years of youth. For various reasons I didn't get that but our life-spans in total can last for more than twice that."

"That's remarkable. And yet without lack of faster than light ships you don't have a galactic civilization. I think we both have a lot to learn from the other. Are the kinds of medical care you talk about available to all?"

Well, this is awkward. Should he keep dancing around the topic of automation? Should he be open about how he isn't really in a position to trade? It doesn't seem like this young man really is either. They might just not have anything to offer one another. He'll put off addressing it at least a little longer. "The quality of medical technology in planetary civilizations varies widely. Among the Qeng Ho, at least a majority of medical care is widely available. It's a standard benefit available to those who serve on our fleets. There are extraordinary procedures which only the most senior people would receive due to resource constraints but those are typically edge cases or ways of extending someone's life to the very edge of our capabilities."

:Hiding information.:

Yeah, everyone here is hiding something. "You said that you use coldsleep for the travel between stars. I am guessing that it's some form of... suspended animation? Do you rotate the crew through it so that most people sleep while one is piloting? I don't imagine you have someone sacrificing their life to just... piloting a ship once."

"That's an accurate understanding of coldsleep. People spend most of the trip off-shift. Time lived is among the most valuable commodities so we try to have enough crew that nobody needs to spend more than a year or two on shift."