Children of Dune dc-3

by Frank Herbert

  Below the crest of each dune they bent low and crept across into the hidden lee, there to pause and peer backward seeking pursuit. No hunters had emerged upon the desert by the time they reached the first rocks.

  In the shadows of the rocks they worked their way around The Attendant, climbed to a ledge looking out upon the desert. Colors blinked far out on the bled. The darkening air held the fragility of fine crystal. The landscape which met their gaze was beyond pity, nowhere did it pause—no hesitations in it at all. The gaze stayed upon no single place in its scanning movements across that immensity.

  It is the horizon of eternity, Leto thought.

  Ghanima crouched beside her brother, thinking: The attack will come soon. She listened for the slightest sound, her whole body transformed into a single sense of taut probing.

  Leto sat equally alert. He knew now the culmination of all the training which had gone into the lives he shared so intimately. In this wilderness one developed a firm dependence upon the senses, all of the senses. Life became a hoard of stored perceptions, each one linked only to momentary survival.

  Presently Ghanima climbed up the rocks and peered through a notch at the way they had come. The safety of the sietch seemed a lifetime away, a bulk of dumb cliffs rising out of brown-purple distance, dust-blurred edges at the rim where the last of the sunlight cast its silver streaks. Still no pursuit could be seen in the intervening distance. She returned to Leto’s side.

  “It’ll be a predatory animal,” Leto said. “That’s my tertiary computation. ”

  “I think you stopped computing too soon,” Ghanima said. “It’ll be more than one animal. House Corrino has learned not to put all of its hopes into a single bag.”

  Leto nodded agreement.

  His mind felt suddenly heavy with the multitude of lives which his difference provided him: all of those lives, his even before birth. He was saturated with living and wanted to flee from his own consciousness. The inner world was a heavy beast which could devour him.

  Restlessly he arose, climbed to the notch Ghanima had used, peered at the cliffs of the sietch. Back there, beneath the cliff, he could see how the qanat drew a line between life and death. On the oasis edge he could see camel sage, onion grass, gobi feather grass, wild alfalfa. In the last of the light he could make out the black movements of birds pick-hopping in the alfalfa. The distant grain tassels were ruffled by a wind which drew shadows that moved right up to the orchard. The motion caught at his awareness, and he saw that the shadows hid within their fluid form a larger change, and that larger change gave ransom to the turning rainbows of a silver-dusted sky.

  What will happen out here? he asked himself.

  And he knew it would either be death or the play of death, himself the object. Ghanima would be the one to return, believing the reality of a death she had seen or reporting sincerely from a deep hypnotic compulsion that her brother was, indeed, slain.

  The unknowns of this place haunted him. He thought how easy it would be to succumb to the demand for prescience, to risk launching his awareness into an unchanging, absolute future. The small vision of his dream was bad enough, though. He knew he dared not risk the larger vision.

  Presently, he returned to Ghanima’s side.

  “No pursuit yet,” he said.

  “The beasts they send for us will be large,” Ghanima said. “We may have time to see them coming.”

  “Not if they come in the night.”

  “It’ll be dark very soon,” she said.

  “Yes. It’s time we went down into our place.” He indicated the rocks to their left and below them where windsand had eaten a tiny cleft in the basalt. It was large enough to admit them, but small enough to keep out large creatures. Leto felt himself reluctant to go there, but knew it must be done. That was the place he’d pointed out to Stilgar.

  “They may really kill us,” he said.

  “This is the chance we have to take,” she said. “We owe it to our father.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  And he thought: This is the correct path; we do the right thing. But he knew how dangerous it was to be right in this universe. Their survival now demanded vigor and fitness and an understanding of the limitations in every moment. Fremen ways were their best armor, and the Bene Gesserit knowledge was a force held in reserve. They were both thinking now as Atreides-trained battle veterans with no other defenses than a Fremen toughness which was not even hinted at by their childish bodies and their formal attire.

  Leto fingered the hilt of the poison-tipped crysknife at his waist. Unconsciously Ghanima duplicated the gesture.

  “Shall we go down now?” Ghanima asked. As she spoke she saw the movement far below them, small movement made less threatening by distance. Her stillness alerted Leto before she could utter a warning.

  “Tigers,” he said.

  “Laza tigers,” she corrected him.

  “They see us,” he said.

  “We’d better hurry,” she said. “A maula would never stop those creatures. They will’ve been well trained for this.”

  “They’ll have a human director somewhere around,” he said, leading the way at a fast lope down the rocks to the left.

  Ghanima agreed, but kept it to herself, saving her strength. There’d be a human around somewhere. Those tigers couldn’t be allowed to run free until the proper moment.

  The tigers moved fast in the last of the light, leaping from rock to rock. They were eye-minded creatures and soon it would be night, the time of the ear-minded. The bell-call of a nightbird came from The Attendant’s rocks to emphasize the change. Creatures of the darkness already were hustling in the shadows of the etched crevasses.

  Still the tigers remained visible to the running twins. The animals flowed with power, a rippling sense of golden sureness in every movement.

  Leto felt that he had stumbled into this place to free himself from his soul. He ran with the sure knowledge that he and Ghanima could reach their narrow notch in time, but his gaze kept returning with fascination to the oncoming beasts.

  One stumble and we’re lost, he thought.

  That thought reduced the sureness of his knowledge, and he ran faster.

  ***

  You Bene Gesserit call your activity of the Panoplia Prophetica a “Science of Religion.” Very well. I, a seeker after another kind of scientist, find this an appropriate definition. You do, indeed, build your own myths, but so do all societies. You I must warn, however. You are behaving as so many other misguided scientists have behaved. Your actions reveal that you wish to take something out of [away from] life. It is time you were reminded of that which you so often profess: One cannot have a single thing without its opposite.

  —THE PREACHER AT ARRAKEEN: A MESSAGE TO THE SISTERHOOD

  In the hour before dawn, Jessica sat immobile on a worn rug of spice-cloth. Around her were the bare rocks of an old and poor sietch, one of the original settlements. It lay below the rim of Red Chasm, sheltered from the westerlies of the desert. Al-Fali and his brothers had brought her here; now they awaited word from Stilgar. The Fedaykin had moved cautiously in the matter of communication, however. Stilgar was not to know their location.

  The Fedaykin already knew they were under a procès-verbal, an official report of crimes against the Imperium. Alia was taking the tack that her mother had been suborned by enemies of the realm, although the Sisterhood had not yet been named. The high-handed, tyrannical nature of Alia’s power was out in the open, however, and her belief that because she controlled the Priesthood she controlled the Fremen was about to be tested.

  Jessica’s message to Stilgar had been direct and simple: “My daughter is possessed and must be put to the trial.”

  Fears destroyed values, though, and it already was known that some Fremen would prefer not to believe this accusation. Their attempts to use the accusation as a passport had brought on two battles during the night, but the omithopters al-Fali’s people had stolen had brought the fugitives to this pr
ecarious safety: Red Chasm Sietch. Word was going out to the Fedaykin from here, but fewer than two hundred of them remained on Arrakis. The others held posts throughout the Empire.

  Reflecting upon these facts, Jessica wondered if she had come to the place of her death. Some of the Fedaykin believed it, but the death commandos accepted this easily enough. Al-Fali had merely grinned at her when some of his young men voiced their fears.

  “When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place,” the old Naib had said.

  The patched curtains at her doorway rustled; al-Fali entered. The old man’s narrow, windburned face appeared drawn, his eyes feverish. Obviously he had not rested.

  “Someone comes,” he said.

  “From Stilgar?”

  “Perhaps.” He lowered his eyes, glanced leftward in the manner of the old Fremen who brought bad news.

  “What is it?” Jessica demanded.

  “We have word from Tabr that your grandchildren are not there.” He spoke without looking at her.

  “Alia …”

  “She has ordered that the twins be given over to her custody, but Sietch Tabr reports that the children are not there. That is all we know.”

  “Stilgar’s sent them into the desert,” Jessica said.

  “Possibly, but it is known that he was searching for them all through the night. Perhaps it was a trick on his part… .”

  “That’s not Stilgar’s way,” she said, and thought: Unless the twins put him up to it. But that didn’t feel right either. She wondered at herself: no sensations of panic to suppress, and her fears for the twins were tempered by what Ghanima had revealed. She peered up at al-Fali, found him studying her with pity in his eyes. She said: “They’ve gone into the desert by themselves. ”

  “Alone? Those two children!”

  She did not bother to explain that “those two children” probably knew more about desert survival than most living Fremen. Her thoughts were fixed, instead, on Leto’s odd behavior when he’d insisted that she allow herself to be abducted. She’d put the memory aside, but this moment demanded it. He’d said she would know the moment to obey him.

  “The messenger should be in the sietch by now,” al-Fali said. “I will bring him to you.” He let himself out through the patched curtain.

  Jessica stared at the curtain. It was red cloth of spice-fiber, but the patches were blue. The story was that this sietch had refused to profit from Muad’Dib’s religion, earning the enmity of Alia’s Priesthood. The people here reportedly had put their capital into a scheme to raise dogs as large as ponies, dogs bred for intelligence as guardians of children. The dogs had all died. Some said it was poison and the Priests were blamed.

  She shook her head to drive out these reflections, recognizing them for what they were: ghafla, the gadfly distraction.

  Where had those children gone? To Jacurutu? They had a plan. They tried to enlighten me to the extent they thought I’d accept, she remembered. And when they’d reached the limits as they saw them, Leto had commanded her to obey.

  He’d commanded her!

  Leto had recognized what Alia was doing; that much was obvious. Both twins had spoken of their aunt’s “affliction,” even when defending her. Alia was gambling on the rightness of her position in the Regency. Demanding custody of the twins confirmed that. Jessica found a harsh laugh shaking her own breast. The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam had been fond of explaining this particular error to her student, Jessica. “If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. Even I, your teacher, have made it.”

  “And even I, your student, have made it,” Jessica whispered to herself.

  She heard fabrics whispering in the passage beyond the curtain. Two young Fremen entered, part of the entourage they’d picked up during the night. The two were obviously awed at being in the presence of Muad’Dib’s mother. Jessica had read them completely: they were non-thinkers, attaching themselves to any fancied power for the identity which this gave them. Without a reflection from her they were empty. Thus, they were dangerous.

  “We were sent ahead by al-Fali to prepare you,” one of the young Fremen said.

  Jessica felt an abrupt clenching tightness in her breast, but her voice remained calm. “Prepare me for what?”

  “Stilgar has sent Duncan Idaho as his messenger.”

  Jessica pulled her aba hood up over her hair, an unconscious gesture. Duncan? But he was Alia’s tool.

  The Fremen who’d spoken took a half step forward. “Idaho says he has come to take you to safety, but al-Fali does not see how this can be.”

  “It seems passing strange, indeed,” Jessica said. “But there are stranger things in our universe. Bring him.”

  They glanced at each other but obeyed, leaving together with such a rush that they tore another rent in the worn curtain.

  Presently Idaho stepped through the curtain, followed by the two Fremen and al-Fali bringing up the rear, hand on his crysknife. Idaho appeared composed. He wore the dress casuals of an Atreides House Guard, a uniform which had changed little in more than fourteen centuries. Arrakis had replaced the old gold-handled plasteel blade with a crysknife, but that was minor.

  “I’m told you wish to help me,” Jessica said.

  “As odd as that may seem,” he said.

  “But didn’t Alia send you to abduct me?” she asked.

  A slight raising of his black eyebrows was the only mark of surprise. The many-faceted Tleilaxu eyes continued to stare at her with glittering intensity. “Those were her orders,” he said.

  Al-Fali’s knuckles went white on his crysknife, but he did not draw.

  “I’ve spent much of this night reviewing the mistakes I made with my daughter,” she said.

  “There were many,” Idaho agreed, “and I shared in most of them.”

  She saw now that his jaw muscles were trembling.

  “It was easy to listen to the arguments which led us astray,” Jessica said.

  “I wanted to leave this place … You … you wanted a girl you saw as a younger version of me.”

  He accepted this silently.

  “Where are my grandchildren?” she demanded, voice going harsh.

  He blinked. Then: “Stilgar believes they have gone into the desert— hiding. Perhaps they saw this crisis coming.”

  Jessica glanced at al-Fali, who nodded his recognition that she had anticipated this.

  “What is Alia doing?” Jessica asked.

  “She risks civil war,” he said.

  “Do you believe it’ll come to that?”

  Idaho shrugged. “Probably not. These are softer times. There are more people willing to listen to pleasant arguments.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Well and good, what of my grandchildren?”

  “Stilgar will find them—if …”

  “Yes, I see.” It was really up to Gurney Halleck then. She turned to look at the rock wall on her left. “Alia grasps the power firmly now.” She looked back at Idaho. “You understand? One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”

  “As my Duke always told me,” Idaho said.

  Somehow Jessica knew he meant the older Leto, not Paul. She asked: “Where am I to be taken in this … abduction?”

  Idaho peered down at her as though trying to see into the shadows created by the hood.

  Al-Fali stepped forward: “My Lady, you are not seriously thinking …”

  “Is it not my right to decide my own fate?” Jessica asked.

  “But this …” Al-Fali’s head nodded toward Idaho.

  “This was my loyal guardian before Alia was born,” Jessica said. “Before he died saving my son’s life and mine. We Atreides always honor certain obligations.”

  “Then you will go with me?” Idaho asked.

  “Where w
ould you take her?” al-Fali asked.

  “Best that you don’t know,” Jessica said.

  Al-Fali scowled but remained silent. His face betrayed indecision, an understanding of the wisdom in her words but an unresolved doubt of Idaho’s trustworthiness.

  “What of the Fedaykin who helped me?” Jessica asked.

  “They have Stilgar’s countenance if they can get to Tabr,” Idaho said. Jessica faced al-Fali: “I command you to go there, my friend. Stilgar can use Fedaykin in the search for my grandchildren.”

  The old Naib lowered his gaze. “As Muad’Dib’s mother commands.”

  He’s still obeying Paul, she thought.

  “We should be out of here quickly,” Idaho said. “The search is certain to include this place, and that early.”

  Jessica rocked forward and arose with that fluid grace which never quite left the Bene Gesserit, even when they felt the pangs of age. And she felt old now after her night of flight. Even as she moved, her mind remained on that peculiar interview with her grandson. What was he really doing? She shook her head, covered the motion by adjusting her hood. It was too easy to fall into the trap of underestimating Leto. Life with ordinary children conditioned one to a false view of the inheritance which the twins enjoyed.

  Her attention was caught by Idaho’s pose. He stood in the relaxed preparedness for violence, one foot ahead of the other, a stance which she herself had taught him. She shot a quick look at the two young Fremen, at al-Fali. Doubts still assailed the old Fremen Naib and the two young men felt this.

  “I trust this man with my life,” she said, addressing herself to al-Fali. “And it is not the first time.”

  “My Lady,” al-Fali protested. “It’s just …” He glared at Idaho. “He’s the husband of the Coan-Teen!”

  “And he was trained by my Duke and by me,” she said.

  “But he’s a ghola!” The words were torn from al-Fali.

  “My son’s ghola,” she reminded him.

  It was too much for a former Fedaykin who’d once pledged himself to support Muad’Dib to the death. He sighed, stepped aside, and motioned the two young men to open the curtains.