“That’s not why he cut his wrist,” Jessica said.
“Oh? I thought he was simply removing himself.”
“You’re not that stupid,” Jessica said. “Stop pretending with me.”
He smiled. “I’m well aware that Alia would destroy me. Not even the Bene Gesserit could expect me to accept her.”
Jessica bent a weighted stare upon Farad’n. What was this young scion of House Corrino? He didn’t play the fool well. Again, she recalled Leto’s words that she’d encounter an interesting student. And The Preacher wanted this as well, Idaho said. She wished she’d met this Preacher.
“Will you banish Wensicia?” Jessica asked.
“It seems a reasonable bargain,” Farad’n said.
Jessica glanced at Idaho. The medics had finished with him. Less dangerous restraints held him in the floater chair.
“Mentats should beware of absolutes,” she said.
“I’m tired,” Idaho said. “You’ve no idea how tired I am.”
“When it’s overexploited, even loyalty wears out finally,” Farad’n said.
Again Jessica shot that measuring stare at him.
Farad’n, seeing this, thought: In time she’ll know me for certain and that could be valuable. A renegade Bene Gesserit of my own! It’s the one thing her son had that I don’t have. Let her get only a glimpse of me now. She can see the rest later.
“A fair exchange,” Farad’n said. “I accept your offer on your terms.” He signaled the mute against the wall with a complex flickering of fingers. The mute nodded. Farad’n bent to the chair’s controls, released Jessica.
Tyekanik asked: “My Lord, are you sure?”
“Isn’t it what we discussed?” Farad’n asked.
“Yes, but …”
Farad’n chuckled, addressed Jessica. “Tyek suspects my sources. But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.”
Jessica mused on this as she lifted herself from the chair. Her mind returned to Farad’n’s hand signals. He had an Atreides-style battle language! It spoke of careful analysis. Someone here was consciously copying the Atreides.
“Of course,” Jessica said, “you’ll want me to teach you as the Bene Gesserit are taught.”
Farad’n beamed at her. “The one offer I cannot resist,” he said.
***
The password was given to me by a man who died in the dungeons of Arrakeen. You see, that is where I got this ring in the shape of a tortoise. It was in the suk outside the city where I was hidden by the rebels. The password? Oh, that has been changed many times since then. It was “Persistence.” And the countersign was “Tortoise.” It got me out of there alive. That’s why I bought this ring: a reminder.
—TAGIR MOHANDIS: CONVERSATIONS WITH A FRIEND
Leto was far out on the sand when he heard the worm behind him, coming to his thumper there and the dusting of spice he’d spread around the dead tigers. There was a good omen for this beginning of their plan: worms were scarce enough in these parts most times. The worm was not essential, but it helped. There would be no need for Ghanima to explain a missing body.
By this time he knew that Ghanima had worked herself into the belief that he was dead. Only a tiny, isolated capsule of awareness would remain to her, a walled-off memory which could be recalled by words uttered in the ancient language shared only by the two of them in all of this universe. Secher Nbiw. If she heard those words: Golden Path … only then would she remember him. Until then, he was dead.
Now Leto felt truly alone.
He moved with the random walk which made only those sounds natural to the desert. Nothing in his passage would tell that worm back there that human flesh moved here. It was a way of walking so deeply conditioned in him that he didn’t need to think about it. The feet moved of themselves, no measurable rhythm to their pacing. Any sound his feet made could be ascribed to the wind, to gravity. No human passed here.
When the worm had done its work behind him, Leto crouched behind a dune’s slipface and peered back toward The Attendant. Yes, he was far enough. He planted a thumper and summoned his transportation. The worm came swiftly, giving him barely enough time to position himself before it engulfed the thumper. As it passed, he went up its side on the Maker hooks, opened the sensitive leading edge of a ring, and turned the mindless beast southeastward. It was a small worm, but strong. He could sense the strength in its twisting as it hissed across the dunes. There was a following breeze and he felt the heat of their passage, the friction which the worm converted to the beginnings of spice within itself.
As the worm moved, his mind moved. Stilgar had taken him up for his first worm journey. Leto had only to let his memory flow and he could hear Stilgar’s voice: calm and precise, full of politeness from another age. Not for Stilgar the threatening staggers of a Fremen drunk on spice-liquor. Not for Stilgar the loud voice and bluster of these times. No—Stilgar had his duties. He was an instructor of royalty: “In the olden times, the birds were named for their songs. Each wind had its name. A six-klick wind was called a Pastaza, a twenty-klick wind was Cueshma, and a hundred-klick wind was Heinali—Heinali, the man-pusher. Then there was the wind of the demon in the open desert: Hulasikali Wala, the wind that eats flesh.”
And Leto, who’d already known these things, had nodded his gratitude at the wisdom of such instruction.
But Stilgar’s voice could be filled with many valuable things.
“There were in olden times certain tribes which were known to be water hunters. They were called Iduali, which meant ‘water insects,’ because those people wouldn’t hesitate to steal the water of another Fremen. If they caught you alone in the desert they would not even leave you the water of your flesh. There was this place where they lived: Sietch Jacurutu. That’s where the other tribes banded and wiped out the Iduali. That was a long time ago, before Kynes even—in my great-great-grandfather’s days. And from that day to this, no Fremen has gone to Jacurutu. It is tabu.”
Thus had Leto been reminded of knowledge which lay in his memory. It had been an important lesson about the working of memory. A memory was not enough, even for one whose past was as multiform as his, unless its use was known and its value revealed to judgment. Jacurutu would have water, a wind trap, all of the attributes of a Fremen sietch, plus the value without compare that no Fremen would venture there. Many of the young would not even know such a place as Jacurutu had ever existed. Oh, they would know about Fondak, of course, but that was a smuggler place.
It was a perfect place for the dead to hide—among the smugglers and the dead of another age.
Thank you, Stilgar.
The worm tired before dawn. Leto slid off its side and watched it dig itself into the dunes, moving slowly in the familiar pattern of the creatures. It would go deep and sulk.
I must wait out the day, he thought.
He stood atop a dune and scanned all around: emptiness, emptiness, emptiness. Only the wavering track of the vanished worm broke the pattern.
The slow cry of a nightbird challenged the first green line of light along the eastern horizon. Leto dug himself into the sand’s concealment, inflated a stilltent around his body and sent the tip of a sandsnorkel questing for air.
For a long time before sleep came, he lay in the enforced darkness thinking about the decision he and Ghanima had made. It had not been an easy decision, especially for Ghanima. He had not told her all of his vision, nor all of the reasoning derived from it. It was a vision, not a dream, in his thinking now. But the peculiarity of this thing was that he saw it as a vision of a vision. If any argument existed to convince him that his father still lived, it lay in that vision-vision.
The life of the prophet locks us into his vision, Leto thought. And a prophet could only break out of the vision by creating his death at variance with that vision. That was how it appeared in Leto’s doubled vision, and he pondered this as it related to the choice he had made. Po
or Baptist John, he thought. If he’d only had the courage to die some other way… . But perhaps his choice had been the bravest one. How do I know what alternatives faced him? I know what alternatives faced my father, though.
Leto sighed. To turn his back on his father was like betraying a god. But the Atreides Empire needed shaking up. It had fallen into the worst of Paul’s vision. How casually it obliterated men. It was done without a second thought. The mainspring of a religious insanity had been wound tight and left ticking.
And we’re locked in my father’s vision.
A way out of that insanity lay along the Golden Path, Leto knew. His father had seen it. But humanity might come out of that Golden Path and look back down it at Muad’Dib’s time, seeing that as a better age. Humankind had to experience the alternative to Muad’Dib, though, or never understand its own myths.
Security … peace … prosperity …
Given the choice, there was little doubt what most citizens of this Empire would select.
Though they hate me, he thought. Though Ghani hate me.
His right hand itched, and he thought of the terrible glove in his vision-vision. It will be, he thought. Yes, it will be.
Arrakis, give me strength, he prayed. His planet remained strong and alive beneath him and around him. Its sand pressed close against the silltent. Dune was a giant counting its massed riches. It was a beguiling entity, both beautiful and grossly ugly. The only coin its merchants really knew was the bloodpulse of their own power, no matter how that power had been amassed. They possessed this planet the way a man might possess a captive mistress, or the way the Bene Gesserits possessed their Sisters.
No wonder Stilgar hated the merchant-priests.
Thank you, Stilgar.
Leto recalled then the beauties of the old sietch ways, the life lived before the coming of the Imperium’s technocracy, and his mind flowed as he knew Stilgar’s dreams flowed. Before the glowglobes and lasers, before the ornithopters and spice-crawlers, there’d been another kind of life: brown-skinned mothers with babies on their hips, lamps which burned spice-oil amidst a heavy fragrance of cinnamon, Naibs who persuaded their people while knowing none could be compelled. It had been a darkswarming of life in rocky burrows …
A terrible glove will restore the balance, Leto thought.
Presently, he slept.
***
I saw his blood and a piece of his robe which had been ripped by sharp claws. His sister reports vividly of the tigers, the sureness of their attack. We have questioned one of the plotters, and others are dead or in custody. Everything points to a Corrino plot. A Truthsayer has attested to this testimony.
—STILGAR’S REPORT TO THE LANDSRAAD COMMISSION
Farad’n studied Duncan Idaho through the spy circuit, seeking a clue to that strange man’s behavior. It was shortly after noon and Idaho waited outside the quarters assigned to the Lady Jessica, seeking audience with her. Would she see him? She’d know they were spied upon, of course. But would she see him?
Around Farad’n lay the room where Tyekanik had guided the training of the Laza tigers—an illegal room, really, filled as it was with forbidden instruments from the hands of the Tleilaxu and Ixians. By the movement of switches at his right hand, Farad’n could look at Idaho from six different angles, or shift to the interior of the Lady Jessica’s suite where the spying facilities were equally sophisticated.
Idaho’s eyes bothered Farad’n. Those pitted metal orbs which the Tleilaxu had given their ghola in the regrowth tanks marked their possessor as profoundly different from other humans. Farad’n touched his own eyelids, feeling the hard surfaces of the permanent contact lenses which concealed the total blue of his spice addiction. Idaho’s eyes must record a different universe. How could it be otherwise. It almost tempted Farad’n to seek out the Tleilaxu surgeons and answer that question himself.
Why did Idaho try to kill himself?
Was that really what he’d tried? He must’ve known we wouldn’t permit it.
Idaho remained a dangerous question mark.
Tyekanik wanted to keep him on Salusa or kill him. Perhaps that would be best.
Farad’n shifted to a frontal view. Idaho sat on a hard bench outside the door to the Lady Jessica’s suite. It was a windowless foyer with light wood walls decorated by lance pennants. Idaho had been on that bench more than an hour and appeared ready to wait there forever. Farad’n bent close to the screen. The loyal swordmaster of the Atreides, instructor of Paul Muad’Dib, had been treated kindly by his years on Arrakis. He’d arrived with a youthful spring in his step. A steady spice diet must have helped him, of course. And that marvelous metabolic balance which the Tleilaxu tanks always imparted. Did Idaho really remember his past before the tanks? No other whom the Tleilaxu had revived could claim this. What an enigma this Idaho was!
The reports of his death were in the library. The Sardaukar who’d slain him reported his prowess: nineteen of their number dispatched by Idaho before he’d fallen. Nineteen Sardaukar! His flesh had been well worth sending to the regrowth tanks. But the Tleilaxu had made a mentat out of him. What a strange creature lived in that regrown flesh. How did it feel to be a human computer in addition to all of his other talents?
Why did he try to kill himself?
Farad’n knew his own talents and held few illusions about them. He was a historian-archaeologist and judge of men. Necessity had forced him to become an expert on those who would serve him—necessity and a careful study of the Atreides. He saw it as the price always demanded of aristocracy. To rule required accurate and incisive judgments about those who wielded your power. More than one ruler had fallen through mistakes and excesses of his underlings.
Careful study of the Atreides revealed a superb talent in choosing servants. They’d known how to maintain loyalty, how to keep a fine edge on the ardor of their warriors.
Idaho was not acting in character.
Why?
Farad’n squinted his eyes, trying to see past the skin of this man. There was a sense of duration about Idaho, a feeling that he could not be worn down. He gave the impression of being self-contained, an organized and firmly integrated whole. The Tleilaxu tanks had set something more than human into motion. Farad’n sensed this. There was a self-renewing movement about the man, as though he acted in accordance with immutable laws, beginning anew at every ending. He moved in a fixed orbit with an endurance about him like that of a planet around a star. He would respond to pressure without breaking—merely shifting his orbit slightly but not really changing anything basic.
Why did he cut his wrist?
Whatever his motive, he had done it for the Atreides, for his ruling House. The Atreides were the star of his orbit.
Somehow he believes that my holding the Lady Jessica here strengthens the Atreides.
And Farad’n reminded himself: A mentat thinks this.
It gave the thought an added depth. Mentats made mistakes, but not often.
Having come to this conclusion, Farad’n almost summoned his aides to have them send the Lady Jessica away with Idaho. He poised himself on the point of acting, withdrew.
Both of those people—the ghola-mentat and the Bene Gesserit witch— remained counters of unknown denomination in this game of power. Idaho must be sent back because that would certainly stir up troubles on Arrakis. Jessica must be kept here, drained of her strange knowledge to benefit House Corrino.
Farad’n knew it was a subtle and deadly game he played. But he had prepared himself for this possibility over the years, ever since he’d realized that he was more intelligent, more sensitive than those around him. It had been a frightening discovery for a child, and he knew the library had been his refuge as well as his teacher.
Doubts ate at him now, though, and he wondered if he was quite up to this game. He’d alienated his mother, lost her counsel, but her decisions had always been dangerous to him. Tigers! Their training had been an atrocity and their use had been stupidity. How easy they were
to trace! She should be thankful to suffer nothing more than banishment. The Lady Jessica’s advice had fitted his needs with a lovely precision there. She must be made to divulge the way of that Atreides thinking.
His doubts began to fade away. He thought of his Sardarkar once more growing tough and resilient through the rigorous training and the denial of luxury which he commanded. His Sardaukar legions remained small, but once more they were a man-to-man match for the Fremen. That served little purpose as long as the limits imposed by the Treaty of Arrakeen governed the relative size of the forces. Fremen could overwhelm him by their numbers—unless they were tied up and weakened by civil war.
It was too soon for a battle of Sardaukar against Fremen. He needed time. He needed new allies from among the discontented Houses Major and the newly powerful from the Houses Minor. He needed access to CHOAM financing. He needed the time for his Sardaukar to grow stronger and the Fremen to grow weaker.
Again Farad’n looked at the screen which revealed the patient ghola. Why did Idaho want to see the Lady Jessica at this time? He would know they were spied upon, that every word, every gesture would be recorded and analyzed.
Why?
Farad’n glanced away from the screen to the ledge beside his control console. In the pale electronic light he could make out the spools which contained the latest reports from Arrakis. His spies were thorough; he had to give them credit. There was much to give him hope and pleasure in those reports. He closed his eyes, and the high points of those reports passed through his mind in the oddly editorial form to which he’d reduced the spools for his own uses:
As the planet is made fertile, Fremen are freed of land pressures and their new communities lose the traditional sietch-stronghold character. From infancy, in the old sietch culture, the Fremen was taught by the rota: “Like the knowledge of your own being, the sietch forms a firm base from which you move out into the world and into the universe.”
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