"What's wrong, Stil?"
Stilgar continued to stare at Alia. "Sire, are you blind?"
Paul turned back to his sister, a feeling of unease beginning to fill him. Of all his aides, only Stilgar dared speak to him in that tone, but even Stilgar measured the occasion by its need.
"This one must have a mate!" Stilgar blurted. "There'll be trouble if she's not wed, and that soon."
Alia whirled away, her face suddenly hot. How did he touch me? she wondered. Bene Gesserit self-control had been powerless to prevent her reaction. How had Stilgar done that? He hadn't the power of the Voice. She felt dismayed and angry.
"Listen to the great Stilgar!" Alia said, keeping her back to them, aware of a shrewish quality in her voice and unable to hide it. "Advice to maidens from Stilgar, the Fremen!"
"As I love you both, I must speak," Stilgar said, a profound dignity in his tone. "I did not become a chieftain among the Fremen by being blind to what moves men and women together. One needs no mysterious powers for this."
Paul weighed Stilgar's meaning, reviewed what they had seen here and his own undeniable male reaction to his own sister. Yes--there'd been a ruttish air about Alia, something wildly wanton. What had made her enter the practice floor in the nude? And risking her life in that foolhardy way! Eleven lights in the fencing prisms! That brainless automaton loomed in his mind with all the aspects of an ancient horror creature. Its possession was the shibboleth of this age, but it carried also the taint of old immorality. Once, they'd been guided by an artificial intelligence, computer brains. The Butlerian Jihad had ended that, but it hadn't ended the aura of aristocratic vice which enclosed such things.
Stilgar was right, of course. They must find a mate for Alia.
"I will see to it," Paul said. "Alia and I will discuss this later--privately."
Alia turned around, focused on Paul. Knowing how his mind worked, she realized she'd been the subject of a mentat decision, uncounted bits falling together in that human-computer analysis. There was an inexorable quality to this realization--a movement like the movement of planets. It carried something of the order of the universe in it, inevitable and terrifying.
"Sire," Stilgar said, "perhaps we'd--"
"Not now!" Paul snapped. "We've other problems at the moment."
Aware that she dared not try to match logic with her brother, Alia put the past few moments aside, Bene Gesserit fashion, said: "Irulan sent you?" She found herself experiencing menace in that thought.
"Indirectly," Paul said. "The information she gives us confirms our suspicion that the Guild is about to try for a sandworm."
"They'll try to capture a small one and attempt to start the spice cycle on some other world," Stilgar said. "It means they've found a world they consider suitable."
"It means they have Fremen accomplices!" Alia argued. "No offworlder could capture a worm!"
"That goes without saying," Stilgar said.
"No, it doesn't," Alia said. She was outraged by such obtuseness. "Paul, certainly you ..."
"The rot is setting in," Paul said. "We've known that for quite some time. I've never seen this other world, though, and that bothers me. If they--"
"That bothers you?" Alia demanded. "It means only that they've clouded its location with Steersmen the way they hide their sanctuaries."
Stilgar opened his mouth, closed it without speaking. He had the overwhelming sensation that his idols had admitted blasphemous weakness.
Paul, sensing Stilgar's disquiet, said: "We've an immediate problem! I want your opinion, Alia. Stilgar suggests we expand our patrols in the open bled and reinforce the sietch watch. It's just possible we could spot a landing party and prevent the--"
"With a Steersman guiding them?" Alia asked.
"They are desperate, aren't they?" Paul agreed. "That is why I'm here."
"What've they seen that we haven't?" Alia asked.
"Precisely."
Alia nodded, remembering her thoughts about the new Dune Tarot. Quickly, she recounted her fears.
"Throwing a blanket over us," Paul said.
"With adequate patrols," Stilgar ventured, "we might prevent the--"
"We prevent nothing ... forever," Alia said. She didn't like the feel of the way Stilgar's mind was working now. He had narrowed his scope, eliminated obvious essentials. This was not the Stilgar she remembered.
"We must count on their getting a worm," Paul said. "Whether they can start the melange cycle on another planet is a different question. They'll need more than a worm."
Stilgar looked from brother to sister. Out of ecological thinking that had been ground into him by sietch life, he grasped their meaning. A captive worm couldn't live except within a bit of Arrakis--sand plankton, Little Makers and all. The Guild's problem was large, but not impossible. His own growing uncertainty lay in a different area.
"Then your visions do not detect the Guild at its work?" he asked.
"Damnation!" Paul exploded.
Alia studied Stilgar, sensing the savage sideshow of ideas taking place in his mind. He was hung on a rack of enchantment. Magic! Magic! To glimpse the future was to steal terrifying fire from a sacred flame. It held the attraction of ultimate peril, souls ventured and lost. One brought back from the formless, dangerous distances something with form and power. But Stilgar was beginning to sense other forces, perhaps greater powers beyond that unknown horizon. His Queen Witch and Sorcerer Friend betrayed dangerous weaknesses.
"Stilgar," Alia said, fighting to hold him, "you stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances."
"There are things hidden from you," Stilgar said. "This you've always said."
"All power is limited," Alia said.
"And danger may come from behind the mountains," Stilgar said.
"It's something on that order," Alia said.
Stilgar nodded, his gaze fastened on Paul's face. "But whatever comes from behind the mountains must cross the dunes."
The most dangerous game in the universe is to govern from an oracular base. We do not consider ourselves wise enough or brave enough to play that game. The measures detailed here for regulation in lesser matters are as near as we dare venture to the brink of government. For our purposes, we borrow a definition from the Bene Gesserit and we consider the various worlds as gene pools, sources of teachings and teachers, sources of the possible. Our goal is not to rule, but to tap these gene pools, to learn, and to free ourselves from all restraints imposed by dependency and government.
--"THE ORGY AS A TOOL OF STATECRAFT," CHAPTER THREE OF THE STEERSMAN'S GUILD
"Is that where your father died?" Edric asked, sending a beam pointer from his tank to a jeweled marker on one of the relief maps adorning a wall of Paul's reception salon.
"That's the shrine of his skull," Paul said. "My father died a prisoner on a Harkonnen frigate in the sink below us."
"Oh, yes: I recall the story now," Edric said. "Something about killing the old Baron Harkonnen, his mortal enemy." Hoping he didn't betray too much of the terror which small enclosures such as this room imposed upon him, Edric rolled over in the orange gas, directed his gaze at Paul, who sat alone on a long divan of striped gray and black.
"My sister killed the Baron," Paul said, voice and manner dry, "just before the battle of Arrakeen."
And why, he wondered, did the Guild man-fish reopen old wounds in this place and at this time?
The Steersman appeared to be fighting a losing battle to contain his nervous energies. Gone were the languid fish motions of their earlier encounter. Edric's tiny eyes jerked here ... there, questing and measuring. The one attendant who had accompanied him in here stood apart near the line of houseguards ranging the end wall at Paul's left. The attendant worried Paul--hulking, thick-necked, blunt and vacant face. The man had entered the salon, nudging Edric's tank along on its supporting field, walking with a stranger's gait, arms akimbo.
The aide's surface shouted stupidity, but the eyes betrayed him. They laughed at everything they saw.
"Your concubine appeared to enjoy the performance of the Face Dancers," Edric said. "It pleases me that I could provide that small entertainment. I particularly enjoyed her reaction to seeing her own features simultaneously repeated by the whole troupe."
"Isn't there a warning against Guildsmen bearing gifts?" Paul asked.
And he thought of the performance out there in the Great Hall. The dancers had entered in the costumes and guise of the Dune Tarot, flinging themselves about in seemingly random patterns that devolved into fire eddies and ancient prognostic designs. Then had come the rulers--a parade of kings and emperors like faces on coins, formal and stiff in outline, but curiously fluid. And the jokes: a copy of Paul's own face and body, Chani repeated across the floor of the Hall, even Stilgar, who had grunted and shuddered while others laughed.
"But our gifts have the kindest intent," Edric protested.
"How kindly can you be?" Paul asked. "The ghola you gave us believes he was designed to destroy us."
"Destroy you, Sire?" Edric asked, all bland attention. "Can one destroy a god?"
Stilgar, entering on the last words, stopped, glared at the guards. They were much farther from Paul than he liked. Angrily he motioned them closer.
"It's all right, Stil," Paul said, lifting a hand. "Just a friendly discussion. Why don't you move the Ambassador's tank over by the end of my divan?"
Stilgar, weighing the order, saw that it would put the Steersman's tank between Paul and the hulking aide, much too close to Paul, but ...
"It's all right, Stil," Paul repeated, and he gave the private hand-signal which made the order an imperative.
Moving with obvious reluctance, Stilgar pushed the tank closer to Paul. He didn't like the feel of the container or the heavily perfumed smell of melange around it. He took up a position at the corner of the tank beneath the orbiting device through which the Steersman spoke.
"To kill a god," Paul said. "That's very interesting. But who says I'm a god?"
"Those who worship you," Edric said, glancing pointedly at Stilgar.
"Is this what you believe?" Paul asked.
"What I believe is of no moment, Sire," Edric said. "It seems to most observers, however, that you conspire to make a god of yourself. And one might ask if that is something any mortal can do ... safely?"
Paul studied the Guildsman. Repellent creature, but perceptive. It was a question Paul had asked himself time and again. But he had seen enough alternate Timelines to know of worse possibilities than accepting godhead for himself. Much worse. These were not, however, the normal avenues for a Steersman to probe. Curious. Why had that question been asked? What could Edric hope to gain by such effrontery? Paul's thoughts went flick (the association of Tleilaxu would be behind this move)--flick (the Jihad's recent Sembou victory would bear on Edric's action)--flick (various Bene Gesserit credos showed themselves here)--flick ...
A process involving thousands of information bits poured flickering through his computational awareness. It required perhaps three seconds.
"Does a Steersman question the guidelines of prescience?" Paul asked, putting Edric on the weakest ground.
This disturbed the Steersman, but he covered well, coming up with what sounded like a long aphorism: "No man of intelligence questions the fact of prescience, Sire. Oracular vision has been known to men since most ancient times. It has a way of entangling us when we least suspect. Luckily, there are other forces in our universe."
"Greater than prescience?" Paul asked, pressing him.
"If prescience alone existed and did everything, Sire, it would annihilate itself. Nothing but prescience? Where could it be applied except to its own degenerating movements?"
"There's always the human situation," Paul agreed.
"A precarious thing at best," Edric said, "without confusing it by hallucinations."
"Are my visions no more than hallucinations?" Paul asked, mock sadness in his voice. "Or do you imply that my worshippers hallucinate?"
Stilgar, sensing the mounting tensions, moved a step nearer Paul, fixed his attention on the Guildsman reclining in the tank.
"You twist my words, Sire," Edric protested. An odd sense of violence lay suspended in the words.
Violence here? Paul wondered. They wouldn't dare! Unless (and he glanced at his guards) the forces which protected him were to be used in replacing him.
"But you accuse me of conspiring to make a god of myself," Paul said, pitching his voice that only Edric and Stilgar might hear. "Conspire?"
"A poor choice of words, perhaps, my Lord," Edric said.
"But significant," Paul said. "It says you expect the worst of me." Edric arched his neck, stared sideways at Stilgar with a look of apprehension. "People always expect the worst of the rich and powerful, Sire. It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular."
A tremor passed across Stilgar's face.
Paul looked up at the movement, sensing the thoughts and angers whispering in Stilgar's mind. How dared this Guildsman talk thus to Muad'dib?
"You're not joking, of course," Paul said.
"Joking, Sire?"
Paul grew aware of dryness in his mouth. He felt that there were too many people in this room, that the air he breathed had passed through too many lungs. The taint of melange from Edric's tank felt threatening.
"Who might my accomplices be in such a conspiracy?" Paul asked presently. "Do you nominate the Qizarate?"
Edric's shrug stirred the orange gas around his head. He no longer appeared concerned by Stilgar, although the Fremen continued to glare at him.
"Are you suggesting that my missionaries of the Holy Orders, all of them, are preaching subtle falsehood?" Paul insisted.
"It could be a question of self-interest and sincerity," Edric said.
Stilgar put a hand to the crysknife beneath his robe.
Paul shook his head, said: "Then you accuse me of insincerity."
"I'm not sure that accuse is the proper word, Sire."
The boldness of this creature! Paul thought. And he said: "Accused or not, you're saying my bishops and I are no better than power-hungry brigands."
"Power-hungry, Sire?" Again, Edric looked at Stilgar. "Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall."
"M'Lord," Stilgar growled, "you've had men executed for less!"
"Men, yes," Paul agreed. "But this is a Guild Ambassador."
"He accuses you of an unholy fraud!" Stilgar said.
"His thinking interests me, Stil," Paul said. "Contain your anger and remain alert."
"As Muad'dib commands."
"Tell me, Steersman," Paul said, "how could we maintain this hypothetical fraud over such enormous distances of space and time without the means to watch every missionary, to examine every nuance in every Qizarate priory and temple?"
"What is time to you?" Edric asked.
Stilgar frowned in obvious puzzlement. And he thought: Muad'dib has often said he sees past the veils of time. What is the Guildsman really saying?
"Wouldn't the structure of such a fraud begin to show holes?" Paul asked. "Significant disagreements, schisms ... doubts, confessions of guilt--surely fraud could not suppress all these."
"What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can," Edric said.
"Are you testing the limits of my tolerance?" Paul asked.
"Do my arguments lack all merit?" Edric countered.
Does he want us to kill him? Paul wondered. Is Edric offering himself as a sacrifice?
"I prefer the cynical view," Paul said, testing. "You obviously are trained in all the lying tricks of statecraft, the double meanings and the power words. Language is nothing more than a weapon to you and, thus, you test my armor."
; "The cynical view," Edric said, a smile stretching his mouth. "And rulers are notoriously cynical where religions are concerned. Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?"
Paul felt himself go inwardly still, a profound caution gripping him. To whom was Edric speaking? Damnable clever words, heavy with manipulation leverages--that undertone of comfortable humor, the unspoken air of shared secrets: his manner said he and Paul were two sophisticates, men of a wider universe who understood things not granted common folk. With a feeling of shock, Paul realized that he had not been the main target for all this rhetoric. This affliction visited upon the court had been speaking for the benefit of others--speaking to Stilgar, to the household guards ... perhaps even to the hulking aide.
"Religious mana was thrust upon me," Paul said. "I did not seek it." And he thought: There! Let this man-fish think himself victorious in our battle of words!
"Then why have you not disavowed it, Sire?" Edric asked.
"Because of my sister Alia," Paul said, watching Edric carefully.
"She is a goddess. Let me urge caution where Alia is concerned lest she strike you dead with her glance."
A gloating smile began forming on Edric's mouth, was replaced by a look of shock.
"I am deadly serious," Paul said, watching the shock spread, seeing Stilgar nod.
In a bleak voice, Edric said: "You have mauled my confidence in you, Sire. And no doubt that was your intent."
"Do not be certain you know my intent," Paul said, and he signaled Stilgar that the audience was at an end.
To Stilgar's questioning gesture asking if Edric were to be assassinated, Paul gave a negative hand-sign, amplified it with an imperative lest Stilgar take matters into his own hands.
Scytale, Edric's aide, moved to the rear corner of the tank, nudged it toward the door. When he came opposite Paul, he stopped, turned that laughing gaze on Paul, said: "If my Lord permits?"
"Yes, what is it?" Paul asked, noting how Stilgar moved close in answer to the implied menace from this man.
"Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes us one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord."
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