“We abduct my mother to save her from harm as much as for any other reason,” Alia said. “We still live by the code!”
He looked down at her. She knew the dangers of inciting a mentat to compute. Didn’t she realize what he had computed? Yet … he still loved her. He brushed a hand across his eyes. How youthful she looked. The Lady Jessica was correct: Alia gave the appearance of not having aged a day in their years together. She still possessed the soft features of her Bene Gesserit mother, but her eyes were Atreides—measuring, demanding, hawklike. And now something possessed of cruel calculation lurked behind those eyes.
Idaho had served House Atreides for too many years not to understand the family’s strengths as well as their weaknesses. But this thing in Alia, this was new. The Atreides might play a devious game against enemies, but never against friends and allies, and not at all against Family. It was ground into the Atreides manner: support your own populace to the best of your ability; show them how much better they lived under the Atreides. Demonstrate your love for your friends by the candor of your behavior with them. What Alia asked now, though, was not Atreides. He felt this with all of his body’s flesh and nerve structure. He was a unit, indivisible, feeling this alien attitude in Alia.
Abruptly his mentat sensorium clicked into full awareness and his mind leaped into the frozen trance where Time did not exist; only the computation existed. Alia would recognize what had happened to him, but that could not be helped. He gave himself up to the computation.
Computation: A reflected Lady Jessica lived out a pseudo-life in Alia’s awareness. He saw this as he saw the reflected pre-ghola Duncan Idaho which remained a constant in his own awareness. Alia had this awareness by being one of the pre-born. He had it out of the Tleilaxu regeneration tanks. Yet Alia denied that reflection, risked her mother’s life. Therefore Alia was not in contact with that pseudo-Jessica within. Therefore Alia was completely possessed by another pseudo-life to the exclusion of all others.
Possessed!
Alien!
Abomination!
Mentat fashion, he accepted this, turned to other facets of his problem. All of the Atreides were on this one planet. Would House Corrino risk attack from space? His mind flashed through the review of those conventions which had ended primitive forms of warfare:
One—All planets were vulnerable to attack from space; ergo: retaliation /revenge facilities were set up off-planet by every House Major. Farad’n would know that the Atreides had not omitted this elementary precaution.
Two—Force shields were a complete defense against projectiles and explosives of non-atomic type, the basic reason why hand-to-hand conflict had reentered human combat. But infantry had its limits. House Corrino might have brought their Sardaukar back to a pre-Arrakeen edge, but they still could be no match for the abandoned ferocity of Fremen.
Three—Planetary feudalism remained in constant danger from a large technical class, but the effects of the Butlerian Jihad continued as a damper on technological excesses. Ixians, Tleilaxu, and a few scattered outer planets were the only possible threat in this regard, and they were planet-vulnerable to the combined wrath of the rest of the Imperium. The Butlerian Jihad would not be undone. Mechanized warfare required a large technical class. The Atreides Imperium had channeled this force into other pursuits. No large technical class existed unwatched. And the Empire remained safely feudalist, naturally, since that was the best social form for spreading over widely dispersed wild frontiers—new planets.
Duncan felt his mentat awareness coruscate as it shot through memory data of itself, completely impervious to the passage of time. Arriving at the conviction that House Corrino would not risk an illegal atomic attack, he did this in flash-computation, the main decisional pathway, but he was perfectly aware of the elements which went into this conviction: The Imperium commanded as many nuclear and allied weapons as all the Great Houses combined. At least half the Great Houses would react without thinking if House Corrino broke the Convention. The Atreides off-planet retaliation system would be joined by overwhelming force, and no need to summon any of them. Fear would do the calling. Salusa Secundus and its allies would vanish in hot clouds. House Corrino would not risk such a holocaust. They were undoubtedly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening “other intelligence” ever be encountered.
The computational thoughts had clean edges, sharp relief. There were no blurred between-places. Alia chose abduction and terror because she had become alien, non-Atreides. House Corrino was a threat, but not in the ways which Alia argued in Council. Alia wanted the Lady Jessica removed because that searing Bene Gesserit intelligence had seen what only now had become clear to him.
Idaho shook himself out of the mentat trance, saw Alia standing in front of him, a coldly measuring expression on her face.
“Wouldn’t you rather the Lady Jessica were killed?” he asked.
The alien-flash of her joy lay exposed before his eyes for a brief instant before being covered by false outrage. “Duncan!”
Yes, this alien-Alia preferred matricide.
“You are afraid of your mother, not for her,” he said.
She spoke without a change in her measuring stare. “Of course I am. She has reported about me to the Sisterhood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know the greatest temptation for a Bene Gesserit?” She moved closer to him, seductive, looked upward at him through her lashes. “I thought only to keep myself strong and alert for the sake of the twins.”
“You speak of temptation,” he said, his voice mentat-flat.
“It’s the thing which the Sisterhood hides most deeply, the thing they most fear. It’s why they call me Abomination. They know their inhibitions won’t hold me back. Temptation—they always speak with heavy emphasis: Great Temptation. You see, we who employ the Bene Gesserit teachings can influence such things as the internal adjustment of enzyme balance within our bodies. It can prolong youth—far longer than with melange. Do you see the consequences should many Bene Gesserits do this? It would be noticed. I’m sure you compute the accuracy of what I’m saying. Melange is what makes us the target for so many plots. We control a substance which prolongs life. What if it became known that Bene Gesserits controlled an even more potent secret? You see! Not one Reverend Mother would be safe. Abduction and torture of Bene Gesserits would become a most common activity.”
“You’ve accomplished this enzyme balancing.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’ve defied the Sisterhood! My mother’s reports to the Sisterhood will make the Bene Gesserits unswerving allies of House Corrino.”
How very plausible, he thought.
He tested: “But surely your own mother would not turn against you!”
“She was Bene Gesserit long before she was my mother. Duncan, she permitted her own son, my brother, to undergo the test of the gom jabbar! She arranged it! And she knew he might not survive it! Bene Gesserits have always been short on faith and long on pragmatism. She’ll act against me if she believes it’s in the best interests of the Sisterhood.”
He nodded. How convincing she was. It was a sad thought.
“We must hold the initiative,” she said. “That’s our sharpest weapon.”
“There’s the problem of Gurney Halleck,” he said. “Do I have to kill my old friend?”
“Gurney’s off on some spy errand in the desert,” she said, knowing Idaho already was aware of this. “He’s safely out of the way.”
“Very odd,” he said, “the Regent Governor of Caladan running errands here on Arrakis.”
“Why not?” Alia demanded. “He’s her lover—in his dreams if not in fact.”
“Yes, of course.” And he wondered that she did not hear the insincerity in his voice.
“When will you abduct her?” Alia asked.
“It’s better that you don’t know.”
&nbs
p; “Yes … yes, I see. Where’ll you take her?”
“Where she cannot be found. Depend upon it; she won’t be left here to threaten you.”
The glee in Alia’s eyes could not be mistaken. “But where will …”
“If you do not know, then you can answer before a Truthsayer, if necessary, that you do not know where she is.”
“Ahhh, clever, Duncan.”
Now she believes I will kill the Lady Jessica, he thought. And he said: “Goodbye, beloved.”
She did not hear the finality in his voice, even kissed him lightly as he left.
And all the way down through the sietchlike maze of Temple corridors, Idaho brushed at his eyes. Tleilaxu eyes were not immune to tears.
***
You have loved Caladan
And lamented its lost host—
But pain discovers
New lovers cannot erase
Those forever ghost.
—REFRAIN FROM THE HABBANYA LAMENT
Stilgar quadrupled the sietch guard around the twins, but he knew it was useless. The lad was like his Atreides namesake, the grandfather Leto. Everyone who’d known the original Duke remarked on it. Leto had the measuring look about him, and caution, yes, but all of it had to be evaluated against that latent wildness, the susceptibility to dangerous decisions.
Ghanima was more like her mother. There was Chani’s red hair, the set of Chani’s eyes, and a calculating way about her when she adjusted to difficulties. She often said that she only did what she had to do, but where Leto led she would follow.
And Leto was going to lead them into danger.
Not once did Stilgar think of taking his problem to Alia. That ruled out Irulan, who ran to Alia with anything and everything. In coming to his decision, Stilgar realized he had accepted the possibility that Leto judged Alia correctly.
She uses people in a casual and callous way, he thought. She even uses Duncan that way. It isn’t so much that she’d turn on me and kill me. She’d discard me.
Meanwhile the guard was strengthened and Stilgar stalked his sietch like a robed specter, prying everywhere. All the time, his mind seethed with the doubts Leto had planted there. If one could not depend upon tradition, then where was the rock upon which to anchor his life?
On the afternoon of the Convocation of Welcome for the Lady Jessica, Stilgar spied Ghanima standing with her grandmother at the entrance lip to the sietch’s great assembly chamber. It was early and Alia had not yet arrived, but people already were thronging into the chamber, casting surreptitious glances at the child and adult as they passed.
Stilgar paused in a shadowed alcove out of the crowd flow and watched the pair of them, unable to hear their words above the murmuring throb of an assembling multitude. The people of many tribes would be here today to welcome back their old Reverend Mother. But he stared at Ghanima. Her eyes, the way they danced when she spoke! The movement fascinated him. Those deep blue, steady, demanding, measuring eyes. And that way of throwing her red-gold hair off her shoulder with a twist of the head: that was Chani. It was a ghostly resurrection, an uncanny resemblance.
Slowly Stilgar drew closer and took up his station in another alcove.
He could not associate Ghanima’s observing manner with any other child of his experience—except her brother. Where was Leto? Stilgar glanced back up the crowded passage. His guards would have spread an alarm if anything were amiss. He shook his head. These twins assaulted his sanity. They were a constant abrasion against his peace of mind. He could almost hate them. Kin were not immune from one’s hatred, but blood (and its precious water) carried demands for one’s countenance which transcended most other concerns. These twins existed as his greatest responsibility.
Dust-filtered brown light came from the cavernous assembly chamber beyond Ghanima and Jessica. It touched the child’s shoulders and the new white robe she wore, backlighting her hair as she turned to peer into the passage at the people thronging past.
Why did Leto afflict me with these doubts? he wondered. There was no doubt that it had been done deliberately. Perhaps Leto wanted me to have a small share of his own mental experience. Stilgar knew why the twins were different, but had always found his reasoning processes unable to accept what he knew. He had never experienced the womb as prison to an awakened consciousness—a living awareness from the second month of gestation, so it was said.
Leto had once said that his memory was like “an internal holograph, expanding in size and in detail from that original shocked awakening, but never changing shape or outline.”
For the first time, as he watched Ghanima and the Lady Jessica, Stilgar began to understand what it must be like to live in such a scrambled web of memories, unable to retreat or find a sealed room of the mind. Faced with such a condition, one had to integrate madness, to select and reject from a multitude of offerings in a system where answers changed as fast as the question.
There could be no fixed tradition. There could be no absolute answers to double-faced questions. What works? That which does not work. What does not work? That which works. He recognized this pattern. It was the old Fremen game of riddles. Question: “It brings death and life.” Answer: “The Coriolis wind.”
Why did Leto want me to understand this? Stilgar asked himself. From his cautious probings, Stilgar knew that the twins shared a common view of their difference: they thought of it as affliction. The birth canal would be a draining place to such a one, he thought. Ignorance reduces the shock of some experiences, but they would have no ignorance about birth. What would it be like to live a life where you knew all of the things that could go wrong? You would face a constant war with doubts. You would resent your difference from your fellows. It would be pleasant to inflict others with even a taste of that difference. “Why me?” would be your first unanswered question.
And what have I been asking myself? Stilgar thought. A wry smile touched his lips. Why me?
Seeing the twins in this new way, he understood the dangerous chances they took with their uncompleted bodies. Ghanima had put it to him succinctly once after he’d berated her for climbing the precipitous west face to the rim above Sietch Tabr.
“Why should I fear death? I’ve been there before—many times.”
How can I presume to teach such children? Stilgar wondered. How can anyone presume?
Oddly, Jessica’s thoughts were moving in a similar vein as she talked to her granddaughter. She’d been thinking how difficult it must be to carry mature minds in immature bodies. The body would have to learn what the mind already knew it could do—aligning responses and reflexes. The old Bene Gesserit prana-bindu regimen would be available to them, but even there the mind would run where the flesh could not. Gurney had a supremely difficult task carrying out her orders.
“Stilgar is watching us from an alcove back there,” Ghanima said.
Jessica did not turn. But she found herself confounded by what she heard in Ghanima’s voice. Ghanima loved the old Fremen as one would love a parent. Even while she spoke lightly of him and teased him, she loved him. The realization forced Jessica to see the old Naib in a new light, understanding in a gestalten revelation what the twins and Stilgar shared. This new Arrakis did not fit Stilgar well, Jessica realized. No more than this new universe fitted her grandchildren.
Unwanted and undemanded, a Bene Gesserit saying flowed through Jessica’s mind: “To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.”
Yes, death would not be a hard yoke to wear, but life was a slow fire to Stilgar and the twins. Each found an ill-fitting world and longed for other ways where variations might be known without threat. They were children of Abraham, learning more from a hawk stooping over the desert than from any book yet written.
Leto had confounded Jessica only that morning as they’d stood beside the qanat which flowed below the sietch. He’d said: “Water traps us, grandmother. We’d be better off living like
dust because then the wind could carry us higher than the highest cliffs of the Shield Wall.”
Although she was familiar with such devious maturity from the mouths of these children, Jessica had been caught by this utterance, but had managed: “Your father might’ve said that.”
And Leto, throwing a handful of sand into the air to watch it fall: “Yes, he might’ve. But my father did not consider then how quickly water makes everything fall back to the ground from which it came.”
Now, standing beside Ghanima in the sietch, Jessica felt the shock of those words anew. She turned, glanced back at the still-flowing throng, let her gaze wander across Stilgar’s shadowy shape in the alcove. Stilgar was no tame Fremen, trained only to carry twigs to the nest. He was still a hawk. When he thought of the color red, he did not think of flowers but of blood.
“You’re so quiet, suddenly,” Ghanima said. “Is something wrong?”
Jessica shook her head. “It’s something Leto said this morning, that’s all.”
“When you went out to the plantings? What’d he say?”
Jessica thought of the curious look of adult wisdom which had come over Leto’s face out there in the morning. It was the same look which came over Ghanima’s face right now. “He was recalling the time when Gurney came back from the smugglers to the Atreides banner,” Jessica said.
“Then you were talking about Stilgar,” Ghanima said.
Jessica did not question how this insight occurred. The twins appeared capable of reproducing each other’s thought trains at will.
“Yes, we were,” Jessica said. “Stilgar didn’t like to hear Gurney calling … Paul his Duke, but Gurney’s presence forced this upon all of the Fremen. Gurney kept saying ‘My Duke.’ ”
“I see,” Ghanima said. “And of course, Leto observed that he was not yet Stilgar’s Duke.”
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