by Judyth Baker
“Mother!” I told her. “We want you to live forever!”
“Then come, my son … and let me lick you?”
She asked it – she did not command it. “Give me some essence of your hormones, that I might be stimulated but one more time to provide our people with yet a few more children, lest those of my own chamber slay me in their anxiety.”
Now I understood why she had allowed both of us into her Royal Chamber: she was desperate for my hormones in her old age, and she knew that Chani 92 could forbid my transferring any hormones to her, since she was bearing many children through me. Her insult was ritualistic: she would not beg for my hormones: she had to insult Chani 92 to prove that of her free will my chosen would allow me to grant my mother some hormones.
Though the Gods forbade her to order me to inseminate her, she could receive hormones from me to stimulate the last of the sperm my father had propelled into her to reach the last of her eggs. If I refused –and I had that right – her chamber-maids would soon begin licking my mother to death, as they were too blind to understand that she would soon produce no more children. They only knew that whenever they licked her in the past, she would be stimulated to go into labor and deliver a baby. If she didn’t, they would become frantic and keep licking her. Thus my mother could well be killed with kindness.8
“O Queen,” I told her, “I will remove you from this chamber myself, as soon as we know what has happened to the Swarm.”
“I have tried to live long enough to see you come to the throne,” she replied, as I allowed her to lick me. When she was finished, the anxious maids around her backed away, because now my mother smelled fertile again. They knew they must wait a few weeks for the next baby to be born, but indeed one would be born, so their primitive fears subsided. As everyone relaxed, my mother explained to us that the Final Swarming was supposed to have been five years ago, and now that it was overdue, perhaps the Gods would never wake up.
“It is time to tell you the greatest secrets of all,” she said. “But not to your consort. Only your chosen wife can hear these words.”
“I love Chani 92,” I insisted.
“Then I will not divulge the secrets that your father told me,” she snarled, with a great quiver of anger running through her gray, tired abdomen.
“The times to keep breeding with selected mates is now over,” I told her. “You, yourself, said my father was supposed to lead us from these dark tombs. Since he died, many have lost faith in the old prophesies. But I continue to believe! And whether or not any survivor returns from the Swarm, I intend to drink the Life Water. I intend to meet the Gods, even though our meeting time is now overdue.”
My mother shook her grayed head, which was encrusted with rubies. “My son!” she cried, “Listen now to your Queen. The question is, can any of us can survive above-ground? For if none return from the Swarm, we cannot continue.”
“Whether any survivors come in from the Swarm or not,” I told her, “I will nevertheless drink the Life Water and learn how to waken the Gods. Then they will tell us how to defeat the thinking machines, the Harkonnen, and we will once more feed upon the Trees of Life. But if I am sacrificed as a heretic, which is the plan, who will waken the Gods, if not I?”
At my words, my mother’s maids fainted to the ground, for my words are very strong and can cut through to the heart. Even my mother began to tremble before me, while Chani 92 straightened herself proudly at my side without fear.
“You must give me the secrets that my father entrusted to you,” I ordered my mother. “Then I will carry you to a new, safe chamber, where we keep our old ones. There you can reign as their Queen, with honor. For we are not as our ancestors, who fretted away and died when their queen died. Yield to us, Mother, and save yourself. Tell us the secrets.”
At that time I drummed my antennae against my communicator, and a dozen armed soldiers placed themselves in a circle around us.
“I will yield,” she agreed. “It is better than to be licked to death by these primitive fools!”
“Chani 92 will come with us,” I told her, staring into her fading eyes. “Just as my father allowed you to hear the secrets from his mother, so, too, will my consort hear them.”
“Then gather me up and take me to her Palace in Rapid City, before it’s too late,” my mother said. “After that, you can take me wherever you wish.”
***
Even Chani 92, who had been born within a few steps of the Deep Palace of the Gods, had never seen the tunnels beyond the Golden Gates, for only Kings and Queens had ever passed beyond those sacred doors. Only the highest order of the Bene Gesseri and the Hawats had ever passed into the Holy of Holies, where after each Swarm, they reported to the Sentry of the Gods the result, and where, in turn, they received prophecies and knowledge.
But during the last Swarm, King Leto the Just collapsed. It was not noticed due to all the dancing until it was too late. Some believed that he had been poisoned. As for the Queen, she was taken to her innermost chambers, where she reduced herself in her sorrows almost to invisibility, hiding herself in mourning. Even I was allowed to visit her only once every three months, until I had been called before her on the occasion of this Swarm.
Now, as we entered the passageway to the Holy of Holies, Chani 92’s mother, the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesseri, joined us. Therefore, she did not object when I requested that Chani 92 should accompany me and the Queen to the Chamber of Secrets within the Holy of Holies.
The Reverend Mother wore long robes, but her scent was strong nevertheless, so we could follow her easily in the darkness. And so we went deep into the dark tunnel leading to the Holy of Holies, where the thumping sound of generators, constantly being fed fuel from the bodies of our people, kept pumping out warmth and creating oxygen. The soldiers guarding the way to the Golden Gates fell back after inspecting the Queen and the Reverend Mother, letting us pass. In a few more turns of the tunnel, there was suddenly the flare of electric torches from where they hung from the old, cracked concrete ceilings. All was now concrete, just as in our silos, but the task of carrying the Queen became easier for me and Chani 92, because the path was flat. Before us, we now could see a pair of elaborate, richly adorned Golden Gates that stood as giant sentinels, stopping us from proceeding.
“Carry me closer,” the Queen told us. “I must touch the small black square. This is the first secret. It is the lock.”
When we drew near the black square, the Queen tapped her antennae on its surface. “Now you two do the same,” she told me. “Do it in the same pattern.”
So Chani 92 and I did the same. Only the Reverend Mother, whose duty it was to enter the gates every week, did not tap the box.
“Let us in!” the Queen called out. “We are the ultimate Bene Gesseri, we are the ultimate Hawats! Guide us by your prophecy and knowledge!”
As she spoke, a blue orb shot out from the black square and passed through the main lock on the Golden Gates, then vanished. Slowly, the gates creaked open.
But before I could step into the tunnel, which was illuminated with a purple light,9 my mother threw her robes over us. “These are killing rays,” she warned us. “They can destroy a Freeman in a matter of minutes, and even we, who have pigments, will suffer painful burns. Therefore, hurry us along, quickly, before the purple lights do their evil!”
However, even as my mother spoke, our Reverend Mother clapped her hands and the purple lights turned off. “It is I who hold this Second Secret,” she explained. “Until now, no one of us has been given all the knowledge needed to approach the sleeping Gods. But together, we have the keys. And you, son of Leto the Just 90, have the right to all, along with your consort, my daughter. Here we must wait, until we know if any of the Swarm have had success.”
So we waited, there in the darkness, fasting and praying. The hours passed, and my mother grew weak, so we shared what we had in our gullets with her. “It is here that your father died,” my mother the Queen revealed. “He collapsed
– I do not know why – at the Swarming, but he ordered us to bring him here, where, in this time of fasting, awaiting news of the survival of any from the Swarming, he died of hunger.”
Her words angered me. “Why didn’t you disobey him?” I demanded. “For then, we would not have lost him.”
“I believed he was stronger than he really was,” my mother replied. “He hid his great weakness from me, until suddenly, he was gone.” And she began to weep tears, which, because they were so acidic, burned her face.10 As we sopped her tears away, the Reverend Mother suddenly warned us to be silent. She was sensing the air, anxiously waving her antennae back and forth. “Shhh! Shhhh!” she whispered. “Feel it … feel it!”
Then we felt some distant vibrations … they brought chills of excitement down my thorax, and into my legs. Exhilarated with hope, we touched our antennae together, for we understood that we were picking up the victory drumming of a nuptial pair who had successfully mated and had survived to reach a Secret Chamber,11 These Chambers were acoustically enhanced to send such vibrations to the Palaces.
How long would the vibrations last? Would more vibrations from other Secret Chambers arise in the darkness? We did not have to wait long: within a few minutes, another vibrating signal reached us. Then another –and another!
It was the Final Swarm! There were survivors! We counted five, six, seven … fifteen … then it seemed as if the very globe of the earth was vibrating, there were so many pairs tapping at the walls of their chambers, signaling that they were alive, that they had mated and would bring forth children whose parents had seen the blue sky – and lived to create their children. After so many centuries, we would soon fulfill our destiny!
After we praised the Gods, my mother the Queen opened some folds in her long robes and brought out sponges filled with refined carbons and pure water, and allowed us to suck on them, restoring our strength. Then we were able to eat our own packets of powdered coal, soon reaching our full powers once more.
As we finished our meal, our Reverend Mother signaled for silence, then turned to me. “Now your time has come,” she announced, her nearly transparent hands hovering over my head as she blessed me. “You must go through the Black Doors, and there you must drink the Life Water. After that, if you live–” she paused. “After that – for you will live! – you must go to that place where we women dare not go. There you will obtain the final knowledge that will save us, if the Gods approve, and do not kill you.”
She mentioned no sacrifice of my life on the altar, because the Swarming had been a success, but there was still the great danger that I was not worthy to awaken the Gods.
As she spoke, she placed her hand against some odd bulge in the concrete, and at once, hundreds of tiny lights glittered overhead, lighting our way. Then we began walking. On either side of us, the old, cracked walls and ceilings grew shiny with phosphorescent mosses that encrusted the concrete, but then we entered a large room. Its walls were made of brushed stainless steel that dripped with dark green mosses. As we continued walking, we carried the Queen, despite her protests to leave her behind, to save our strength. Once when we passed through a set of doors, an alarm signal traveled through the air, awakening sets of fans that pumped fresh air into the room. It had been sealed so tightly that the air within was stale and sickening.
The odd thought came to me, then, that we seemed to be walking inside one of the enormous engines from the former world that used to power huge cities. The Gods had built this incredible metal tunnel of stainless steel – a material which we had only in scraps, bits and pieces, with which to strengthen our own concrete tunnels,12 for we could not produce enough gas from our anal bags to smelt iron and steel. Everything we had came from soft precious metals such as gold, that we could beat into shapes, or our energy and possessions came from coal or coal oils (from which we made plastics of every sort).
Now we could see yet another set of doors, but these were made of some kind of black obsidian glass, covered with strange, mystifying writing. I had reached my destination. Here, we laid the Queen upon the Reverend Mother’s robes, and they all bowed before me. “Touch the black square as you were shown, Maud’Dib!” the Reverend Mother told me. “Once you pass through these doors, you cannot return. Only if the Gods themselves will carry you back to us on their great wings, will we see your face again.”
“This I never knew!” Chani 92 cried out. “I must come with you!” she gasped out, though she knew it was forbidden. Then came the blow of anger from the Reverend Mother’s hard, sere leg, striking Chani 92 firmly across her thorax. “You carry his unborn children!” the Reverend Mother hissed. “You cannot risk losing them!”
I embraced my consort, and then, in my own fierce anger, I made the demand I had planned to make. “Do not presume upon me, Reverend Mother!” I shouted, rattling my antennae against her chitonous chest. “Before I go through these doors, you will consent; and so will the Queen, to our marriage! I will not leave my children nameless in her womb!”
“I won’t consent!” the Queen snarled, as Chani 92 tried to hide her head from the whiplashes of the thrashing antennae.
“I will not allow it!” the Reverend Mother decreed, just as I stepped between them and took the blows against my own body. This intervention was so shocking – that I would move in to protect my consort against the Queen and Reverend Mother – the two most important females in the entire Kingdom, that they drew back. Chani 92 collapsed, weeping her acid tears of shame, at my feet.
“You permitted her to bear my children!” I told them. “But I was never to endow them, though they would be older than any that might come from a Dakota Mountain tribal princess? I should have married her long ago! Marry us now, or I will not pass through the obsidian gates.”
I stood glaring at them, while stroking Chani 92’s antennae, to soothe her.
“Did you not love Leto the Just?” I demanded of my mother. “Speak!”
“My love was for the children he gave me, and for my son, who now betrays my wishes!” she replied.
“As the ages passed, did you not ever love a mate?” I demanded of the Reverend Mother. “Speak it!”
“I do not know,” she replied.
“Marry us!”
Then the maids and the protecting soldiers encircled us, and both the Queen and the Reverend Mother knew that they could not disobey me. Raising their arms high, they began tapping their antennae together in the tradition of our tribe. Though we had no wings and would never swim through the blue skies with the giddy joy of the Swarm, we had our own happiness when the Reverend Mother and the Queen sang our wedding medleys. As they did so, I exchanged my essence with hers, and our thoughts and desires became one, as they always did when we mated. But of mating, that day, we forbore.
The marriage complete, the Queen and the Reverend Mother embraced my beautiful wife, as if they had always loved her, and as they did so, her pheromones mingled with theirs and overwhelmed their anger and former hatred. Now they could not kill her, or think to do her any harm, and I was satisfied. As for Chani 92, she fell into my arms, and for a while, we rested together.
“Let me come with you!” she begged.
“Promise me a son of the Princely Caste, from Chani 92, of the House of Atreides!” I ordered my wife, in the old ritual manner, as the Queen, and the Reverend Mother bowed their heads. “Promise it, O Queen! Promise it, Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesseri! Assure me that I have my son, before I go to do battle.”
They murmured that I had a son, and so my son’s life began, as we mated under the very robes upon which my mother the Queen had rested, as the Reverend Mother chanted her prayers and Chani 92 laughed with joy as she felt the stirrings of a strong, new life within her.
Now I was ready.
“Love is strong, love gives life,” I told Chani 92. To the rest, I looked at them with the stare of a Warrior General, then turned and strode to the black doors. They opened, and received me into an utter darkness, blacker than the dar
kest vein of anthracite coal. The door slammed shut behind me, with a whiff of stale air, and I knew that no one had passed through this doorway for centuries. Unable to see, as blind as when I was born, I moved with steady steps, refusing to be afraid, refusing to take small steps, and suddenly, I found myself before a hard, cold wall. Finding small contours and running my hands and my feet everywhere I could in the thick darkness, I found an opening that headed uphill.
No sooner had I stepped through the opening than a flood of bright light exploded before my eyes. Shielding them from the glare, I entered another room, similar to the one where Chani 92 and the others waited, but this one included a white, padded table in its center. Not only the walls and ceiling but also the floor were harshly white. There were no other features to this round room – only the wide slit in the wall through which I had entered the chamber.
“Welcome,” came a deep, resonating voice from nowhere. The voice seemed to travel into my body from my feet. This was a very ancient way of communicating. “Lie down on the table.”
I understood that I was about to undergo an ordeal. It surely had to do with the Life-Water. I was prepared for whatever the Gods intended to do to me, but at the same time, I was not going to do this thing in utter ignorance.
“First, tell me who you are,” I challenged.
“Do as I tell you, or I will tase you!” came the voice.
”For this purpose I was born,” I replied. “But I have the right to know who you are.”
