Children of Dune dc-3

by Frank Herbert

  Neutral territory, he thought. There’s been another negotiation with rebellious tribes. She’s losing ground and doesn’t know it … or does she? Is there another reason? Has Stilgar gone over to her?

  “The betrothal,” Alia mused. “What are conditions in the Corrino House?”

  “Salusa swarms with outrine relatives, all working upon Farad’n, hoping for a share in his return to power.”

  “And she’s training him in the Bene Gesserit …”

  “Is it not fitting for Ghanima’s husband?”

  Alia smiled to herself, thinking of Ghanima’s adamant rage. Let Farad’n be trained. Jessica was training a corpse. It would all work out.

  “I must consider this at length,” she said. “You’re very quiet, Duncan.”

  “I await your questions.”

  “I see. You know, I was very angry with you. Taking her to Farad’n!”

  “You commanded me to make it real.”

  “I was forced to put out the report that you’d both been taken captive,” she said.

  “I obeyed your orders.”

  “You’re so literal at times, Duncan. You almost frighten me. But if you hadn’t, well …”

  “The Lady Jessica’s out of harm’s way,” he said. “And for Ghanima’s sake we should be grateful that—”

  “Exceedingly grateful,” she agreed. And she thought: He’s no longer trustworthy. He has that damnable Atreides loyalty. I must make an excuse to send him away … and have him eliminated. An accident, of course.

  She touched his cheek.

  Idaho forced himself to respond to the caress, taking her hand and kissing it.

  “Duncan, Duncan, how sad it is,” she said. “But I cannot keep you here with me. Too much is happening and I’ve so few I can completely trust.”

  He released her hand, waited.

  “I was forced to send Ghanima to Tabr,” she said. “Things are in deep unrest here. Raiders from the Broken Lands breached the qanats at Kagga Basin and spilled all of their waters into the sands. Arrakeen was on short rations. The Basin’s alive with sandtrout yet, reaping the water harvest. They’re being dealt with, of course, but we’re spread very thin.”

  He’d already noted how few amazons of Alia’s guard were to be seen in the Keep. And he thought: The Maquis of the Inner Desert will keep on probing her defenses. Doesn’t she know that?

  “Tabr is still neutral territory,” she said. “Negotiations are continuing there right now. Javid’s there with a delegation from the Priesthood. But I’d like you at Tabr to watch them, especially Irulan.”

  “She is Corrino,” he agreed.

  But he saw in her eyes that she was rejecting him. How transparent this Alia-creature had become!

  She waved a hand. “Go now, Duncan, before I soften and keep you here beside me. I’ve missed you so …”

  “And I’ve missed you,” he said, allowing all of his grief to flow into his voice.

  She stared at him, startled by the sadness. Then: “For my sake, Duncan.” And she thought: Too bad, Duncan. She said: “Zia will take you to Tabr. We need the ’thopter back here.”

  Her pet amazon, he thought: I must be careful of that one.

  “I understand,” he said, once more taking her hand and kissing it. He stared at the dear flesh which once had been his Alia’s. He could not bring himself to look at her face as he left. Someone else stared back at him from her eyes.

  As he mounted to the Keep’s roofpad, Idaho probed a growing sense of unanswered questions. The meeting with Alia had been extremely trying for the mentat part of him which kept reading data signs. He waited beside the ’thopter with one of the Keep’s amazons, stared grimly southward. Imagination took his gaze beyond the Shield Wall to Sietch Tabr. Why does Zia take me to Tabr? Returning a ’thopter is a menial task. What is the delay? Is Zia getting special instructions?

  Idaho glanced at the watchful guard, mounted to the pilot’s position in the ’thopter. He leaned out, said: “Tell Alia I’ll send the ’thopter back immediately with one of Stilgar’s men.”

  Before the guard could protest he closed the door and started the ’thopter. He could see her standing there indecisively. Who could question Alia’s consort? He had the ’thopter airborne before she could make up her mind what to do.

  Now, alone in the ’thopter, he allowed his grief to spend itself in great wracking sobs. Alia was gone. They had parted forever. Tears flowed from his Tleilaxu eyes and he whispered: “Let all the waters of Dune flow into the sand. They will not match my tears.”

  This was a non-mentat excess, though, and he recognized it as such, forcing himself to sober assessment of present necessities. The ’thopter demanded his attention. The reactions of flying brought him some relief, and he had himself once more in hand.

  Ghanima with Stilgar again. And Irulan.

  Why had Zia been designated to accompany him? He made it a mentat problem and the answer chilled him. I was to have a fatal accident.

  ***

  This rocky shrine to the skull of a ruler grants no prayers. It has become the grave of lamentations. Only the wind hears the voice of this place. The cries of night creatures and the passing wonder of two moons, all say his day has ended. No more supplicants come. The visitors have gone from the feast. How bare the pathway down this mountain.

  —LINES AT THE SHRINE OF AN ATREIDES DUKE ANON.

  The thing had the deceptive appearance of simplicity to Leto: avoiding the vision, do that which has not been seen. He knew the trap in his thought, how the casual threads of a locked future twisted themselves together until they held you fast, but he had a new grip on those threads. Nowhere had he seen himself running from Jacurutu. The thread to Sabiha must be cut first.

  He crouched now in the last daylight at the eastern edge of the rock which protected Jacurutu. His Fremkit had produced energy tablets and food. He waited now for strength. To the west lay Lake Azrak, the gypsum plain where once there’d been open water in the days before the worm. Unseen to the east lay the Bene Sherk, a scattering of new settlements encroaching upon the open bled. To the south lay the Tanzerouft, the Land of Terror: thirty-eight hundred kilometers of wasteland broken only by patches of grass-locked dunes and windtraps to water them—the work of the ecological transformation remaking the landscape of Arrakis. They were serviced by airborne teams and no one stayed for long.

  I will go south, he told himself. Gurney will expect me to do that. This was not the moment to do the completely unexpected.

  It would be dark soon and he could leave this temporary hiding place. He stared at the southern skyline. There was a whistling of dun sky along that horizon, rolling there like smoke, a burning line of undulant dust—a storm. He watched the high center of the storm rising up out of the Great Flat like a questing worm. For a full minute he watched the center, saw that it did not move to the right or the left. The old Fremen saying leaped into his mind: When the center does not move, you are in its path.

  That storm changed matters.

  For a moment he stared back westward the direction of Tabr, feeling the deceptive grey-tan peace of the desert evening, seeing the white gypsum pan edged by wind-rounded pebbles, the desolate emptiness with its unreal surface of glaring white reflecting dust clouds. Nowhere in any vision had he seen himself surviving the grey serpent of a mother storm or buried too deeply in sand to survive. There was only that vision of rolling in wind … but that might come later.

  And a storm was out there, winding across many degrees of latitude, whipping its world into submission. It could be risked. There were old stories, always heard from a friend of a friend, that one could lock an exhausted worm on the surface by propping a Maker hook beneath one of its wide rings and, having immobilized it, ride out a storm in the leeward shadow. There was a line between audacity and abandoned recklessness which tempted him. That storm would not come before midnight at the earliest. There was time. How many threads could be cut here? All, including the final one?
<
br />   Gurney will expect me to go south, but not into a storm.

  He stared down to the south, seeking a pathway, saw the fluent ebony brushstroke of a deep gorge curving through Jacurutu’s rock. He saw sand curls in the bowels of the gorge, chimera sand. It uttered its haughty runnels onto the plain as though it were water. The gritty taste of thirst whispered in his mouth as he shouldered his Fremkit and let himself down onto the path which led into the canyon. It was still light enough that he might be seen, but he knew he was gambling with time.

  As he reached the canyon’s lip, the quick night of the central desert fell upon him. He was left with the parched glissando of moonglow to light his way toward the Tanzerouft. He felt his heartbeat quicken with all of the fears which his wealth of memories provided. He sensed that he might be going down into Huanui-naa, as Fremen fears labeled the greatest storms: the Earth’s Deathstill. But whatever came, it would be visionless. Every step left farther behind him the spice-induced dhyana, that spreading awareness of his intuitive-creative nature with its unfolding to the motionless chain of causality. For every hundred steps he took now, there must be at least one step aside, beyond words and into communion with his newly grasped internal reality.

  One way or another, father, I’m coming to you.

  There were birds invisible in the rocks around him, making themselves known by small sounds. Fremen-wise, he listened for their echoes to guide his way where he could not see. Often as he passed crannies he marked the baleful green of eyes, creatures crouched in hiding because they knew a storm approached.

  He emerged from the gorge onto the desert. Living sand moved and breathed beneath him, telling of deep actions and latent fumaroles. He looked back and up to the moon-touched lava caps on Jacurutu’s buttes. The whole structure was metamorphic, mostly pressure-formed. Arrakis still had something to say in its own future. He planted his thumper to call a worm and, when it began beating against the sand, took his position to watch and listen. Unconsciously his right hand went to the Atreides hawk ring concealed in a knotted fold of his dishsasha. Gurney had found it, but had left it. What had he thought, seeing Paul’s ring?

  Father, expect me soon.

  The worm came from the south. It angled in to avoid the rocks, not as large a worm as he’d hoped, but that could not be remedied. He gauged its passage, planted his hooks, and went up the scaled side with a quick scrambling as it swept over the thumper in a swishing dust spray. The worm turned easily under the pressure of his hooks. The wind of its passage began to whip his robe. He bent his gaze on the southern stars, dim through dust, and pointed the worm that way.

  Right into the storm.

  As First Moon rose, Leto gauged the storm height and put off his estimate of its arrival. Not before daylight. It was spreading out, gathering more energy for a great leap. There’d be plenty of work for the ecological transformation teams. It was as though the planet fought them with a conscious fury out here, the fury increasing as the transformation took in more land.

  All night he pressed the worm southward, sensing the reserves of its energy in the movements transmitted through his feet. Occasionally he let the beast fall off to the west which it was forever trying to do, moved by the invisible boundaries of its territory or by a deep-seated awareness of the coming storm. Worms buried themselves to escape the sandblast winds, but this one would not sink beneath the desert while Maker hooks held any of its rings open.

  At midnight the worm was showing many signs of exhaustion. He moved back along its great ridges and worked the flail, allowing it to slow down but continuing to drive it southward.

  The storm arrived just after daybreak. First there was the beady stretched-out immobility of the desert dawn pressing dunes one into another. Next, the advancing dust caused him to seal his face flaps. In the thickening dust the desert became a dun picture without lines. Then sand needles began cutting his cheeks, stinging his lids. He felt the coarse grit on his tongue and knew the moment of decision had come. Should he risk the old stories by immobilizing the almost exhausted worm? He took only a heartbeat to discard this choice, worked his way back to the worm’s tail, slacked off his hooks. Barely moving now, the worm began to burrow. But the excesses of the creature’s heat-transfer system still churned up a cyclone oven behind him in the quickening storm. Fremen children learned the dangers of this position near the worm’s tail with their earliest stories. Worms were oxygen factories; fire burned wildly in their passage, fed by the lavish exhalations from the chemical adaptations to friction within them.

  Sand began to whip around his feet. Leto loosed his hooks and leaped wide to avoid the furnace at the tail. Everything depended now on getting beneath the sand where the worm had loosened it.

  Grasping the static compaction tool in his left hand, he burrowed into a dune’s slipface, knowing the worm was too tired to turn back and swallow him in its great white-orange mouth. As he burrowed with his left hand, his right hand worked the stilltent from his Fremkit and he readied it for inflation. It was all done in less than a minute: he had the tent into a hard-walled sand pocket on the lee face of a dune. He inflated the tent and crawled into it. Before sealing the sphincter, he reached out with the compaction tool, reversed its action. The slipface came sliding down over the tent. Only a few sand grains entered as he sealed the opening.

  Now he had to work even more quickly. No sandsnorkel would reach up there to keep him supplied with breathing air. This was a great storm, the kind few survived. It would cover this place with tons of sand. Only the tender bubble of the stilltent with its compacted outer shell would protect him.

  Leto stretched flat on his back, folded his hands over his breast and sent himself into a dormancy trance where his lungs would move only once an hour. In this he committed himself to the unknown. The storm would pass and, if it did not expose his fragile pocket, he might emerge … or he might enter the Madinat assalam, the Abode of Peace. Whatever happened, he knew he had to break the threads, one by one, leaving him at last only the Golden Path. It was that, or he could not return to the caliphate of his father’s heirs. No more would he live the lie of that Desposyni, that terrible caliphate, chanting to the demiurge of his father. No more would he keep silent when a priest mouthed offensive nonsense: “His crysknife will dissolve demons!”

  With this commitment, Leto’s awareness slipped into the web of timeless dao.

  ***

  There exist obvious higher-order influences in any planetary system. This is often demonstrated by introducing terraform life onto newly discovered planets. In all such cases, the life in similar zones develops striking similarities of adaptive form. This form signifies much more than shape; it connotes a survival organization and a relationship of such organizations. The human quest for this interdependent order and our niche within it represents a profound necessity. The quest can, however, be perverted into a conservative grip on sameness. This has always proved deadly for the entire system.

  —THE DUNE CATASTROPHE AFTER HARQ AL-ADA

  “My son didn’t really see the future; he saw the process of creation and its relationship to the myths in which men sleep,” Jessica said. She spoke swiftly but without appearing to rush the matter. She knew the hidden observers would find a way to interrupt as soon as they recognized what she was doing.

  Farad’n sat on the floor outlined in a shaft of afternoon sunlight which slanted through the window behind him. Jessica could just see the top of a tree in the courtyard garden when she glanced across from her position standing against the far wall. It was a new Farad’n she saw: more slender, more sinewy. The months of training had worked their inevitable magic on him. His eyes glittered when he stared at her.

  “He saw the shapes which existing forces would create unless they were diverted,” Jessica said. “Rather than turn against his fellow men, he turned against himself. He refused to accept only that which comforted him because that was moral cowardice.”

  Farad’n had learned to listen silently testi
ng, probing, holding his questions until he had shaped them into a cutting edge. She had been talking about the Bene Gesserit view of molecular memory expressed as ritual and had, quite naturally, diverged to the Sisterhood’s way of analyzing Paul Muad’Dib. Farad’n saw a shadow play in her words and actions, however, a projection of unconscious forms at variance with the surface intent of her statements.

  “Of all our observations, this is the most crucial,” she’d said. “Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself. We assume that all of humankind and its supportive life forms represent a natural community and that the fate of all life is at stake in the fate of the individual. Thus, when it comes to that ultimate self-examination, the amor fati, we stop playing god and revert to teaching. In the crunch, we select individuals and we set them as free as we’re able.”

  He saw now where she had to be going and knowing its effect upon those who watched through the spy eyes, refrained from casting an apprehensive glance at the door. Only a trained eye could have detected his momentary imbalance, but Jessica saw it and smiled. A smile, after all, could mean anything.

  “This is a sort of graduation ceremony,” she said. “I’m very pleased with you, Farad’n. Will you stand, please.”

  He obeyed, blocking off her view of the treetop through the window behind him.

  Jessica held her arms stiffly at her side, said: “I am charged to say this to you. ‘I stand in the sacred human presence. As I do now, so should you stand someday. I pray to your presence that this be so. The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.’ ”

  As Jessica finished speaking, Tyekanik came through the door on her left, moving with a false casualness which the scowl on his face belied. “My Lord,” he said. But it already was too late. Jessica’s words and all of the preparation which had gone before had done their work. Farad’n no longer was Corrino. He was now Bene Gesserit.