She thought not.
This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag—a cheap and brassy place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Broken Land. Leto had been wise to choose this place for his seat of government. The name, Arrakeen, had a good sound, filled with tradition. And this was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend.
Again there came the clatter of boxes being unloaded in the entry. Jessica sighed.
Against a carton to her right stood the painting of the Duke’s father. Wrapping twine hung from it like a frayed decoration. A piece of the twine was still clutched in Jessica’s left hand. Beside the painting lay a black bull’s head mounted on a polished board. The head was a dark island in a sea of wadded paper. Its plaque lay flat on the floor, and the bull’s shiny muzzle pointed at the ceiling as though the beast were ready to bellow a challenge into this echoing room.
Jessica wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things first—the head and the painting. She knew there was something symbolic in the action. Not since the day when the Duke’s buyers had taken her from the school had she felt this frightened and unsure of herself.
The head and the picture.
They heightened her feelings of confusion. She shuddered, glanced at the slit windows high overhead. It was still early afternoon here, and in these latitudes the sky looked black and cold—so much darker than the warm blue of Caladan. A pang of homesickness throbbed through her.
So far away, Caladan.
“Here we are!”
The voice was Duke Leto’s.
She whirled, saw him striding from the arched passage to the dining hall. His black working uniform with red armorial hawk crest at the breast looked dusty and rumpled.
“I thought you might have lost yourself in this hideous place,” he said.
“It is a cold house,” she said. She looked at his tallness, at the dark skin that made her think of olive groves and golden sun on blue waters. There was woodsmoke in the gray of his eyes, but the face was predatory: thin, full of sharp angles and planes.
A sudden fear of him tightened her breast. He had become such a savage, driving person since the decision to bow to the Emperor’s command.
“The whole city feels cold,” she said.
“It’s a dirty, dusty little garrison town,” he agreed. “But we’ll change that.” He looked around the hall. “These are public rooms for state occasions. I’ve just glanced at some of the family apartments in the south wing. They’re much nicer.” He stepped closer, touched her arm, admiring her stateliness.
And again, he wondered at her unknown ancestry—a renegade House, perhaps? Some black-barred royalty? She looked more regal than the Emperor’s own blood.
Under the pressure of his stare, she turned half away, exposing her profile. And he realized there was no single and precise thing that brought her beauty to focus. The face was oval under a cap of hair the color of polished bronze. Her eyes were set wide, as green and clear as the morning skies of Caladan. The nose was small, the mouth wide and generous. Her figure was good but scant: tall and with its curves gone to slimness.
He remembered that the lay sisters at the school had called her skinny, so his buyers had told him. But that description oversimplified. She had brought a regal beauty back into the Atreides line. He was glad that Paul favored her.
“Where’s Paul?” he asked.
“Someplace around the house taking his lessons with Yueh.”
“Probably in the south wing,” he said. “I thought I heard Yueh’s voice, but I couldn’t take time to look.” He glanced down at her, hesitating. “I came here only to hang the key of Caladan Castle in the dining hall.”
She caught her breath, stopped the impulse to reach out to him. Hanging the key—there was finality in that action. But this was not the time or place for comforting. “I saw our banner over the house as we came in,” she said.
He glanced at the painting of his father. “Where were you going to hang that?”
“Somewhere in here.”
“No.” The word rang flat and final, telling her she could use trickery to persuade, but open argument was useless. Still, she had to try, even if the gesture served only to remind herself that she would not trick him.
“My Lord,” she said, “if you’d only....”
“The answer remains no. I indulge you shamefully in most things, not in this. I’ve just come from the dining hall where there are—”
“My Lord! Please.”
“The choice is between your digestion and my ancestral dignity, my dear,” he said. “They will hang in the dining hall.”
She sighed. “Yes, my Lord.”
“You may resume your custom of dining in your rooms whenever possible. I shall expect you at your proper position only on formal occasions.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“And don’t go all cold and formal on me! Be thankful that I never married you, my dear. Then it’d be your duty to join me at table for every meal.”
She held her face immobile, nodded.
“Hawat already has our own poison snooper over the dining table,” he said. “There’s a portable in your room.”
“You anticipated this ... disagreement,” she said.
“My dear, I think also of your comfort. I’ve engaged servants. They’re locals, but Hawat has cleared them—they’re Fremen all. They’ll do until our own people can be released from their other duties.”
“Can anyone from this place be truly safe?”
“Anyone who hates Harkonnens. You may even want to keep the head housekeeper: the Shadout Mapes.”
“Shadout,” Jessica said. “A Fremen title?”
“I’m told it means ‘well-dipper,’ a meaning with rather important overtones here. She may not strike you as a servant type, although Hawat speaks highly of her on the basis of Duncan’s report. They’re convinced she wants to serve—specifically that she wants to serve you.”
“Me?”
“The Fremen have learned that you’re Bene Gesserit,” he said. “There are legends here about the Bene Gesserit.”
The Missionaria Protectiva, Jessica thought. No place escapes them.
“Does this mean Duncan was successful?” she asked. “Will the Fremen be our allies?”
“There’s nothing definite,” he said. “They wish to observe us for a while, Duncan believes. They did, however, promise to stop raiding our outlying villages during a truce period. That’s a more important gain than it might seem. Hawat tells me the Fremen were a deep thorn in the Harkonnen side, that the extent of their ravages was a carefully guarded secret. It wouldn’t have helped for the Emperor to learn the ineffectiveness of the Harkonnen military.”
“A Fremen housekeeper,” Jessica mused, returning to the subject of the Shadout Mapes. “She’ll have the all-blue eyes.”
“Don’t let the appearance of these people deceive you,” he said. “There’s a deep strength and healthy vitality in them. I think they’ll be everything we need.”
“It’s a dangerous gamble,” she said.
“Let’s not go into that again,” he said.
She forced a smile. “We are committed, no doubt of that.” She went through the quick regimen of calmness—the two deep breaths, the ritual thought, then: “When I assign rooms, is there anything special I should reserve for you?”
“You must teach me someday how you do that,” he said, “the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing.”
“It’s a female thing,” she said.
He smiled. “Well, assignment of rooms: make certain I have large office space next to my sleeping quarters. There’ll be more paper work here than on Caladan. A guard room, of course. That should cover it. Don’t worry about security of the house. Hawat’s men have been over it in depth.”
“I’m sure they have.”
He glanced at his wristwatch. “And you might see that all our timepieces are adjusted for Arrakeen local. I’ve assigned a tech to take care of it. He’ll be along presently.” He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. “I must return to the landing field now. The second shuttle’s due any minute with my staff reserves.”
“Couldn’t Hawat meet them, my Lord? You look so tired.”
“The good Thufir is even busier than I am. You know this planet’s infested with Harkonnen intrigues. Besides, I must try persuading some of the trained spice hunters against leaving. They have the option, you know, with the change of fief—and this planetologist the Emperor and the Landsraad installed as Judge of the Change cannot be bought. He’s allowing the opt. About eight hundred trained hands expect to go out on the spice shuttle and there’s a Guild cargo ship standing by.”
“My Lord....” She broke off, hesitating.
“Yes?”
He will not be persuaded against trying to make this planet secure for us, she thought. And I cannot use my tricks on him.
“At what time will you be expecting dinner?” she asked.
That’s not what she was going to say, he thought Ah-h-h-h, my Jessica, would that we were somewhere else, anywhere away from this terrible place—alone, the two of us, without a care.
“I’ll eat in the officers’ mess at the field,” he said. “Don’t expect me until very late. And ... ah, I’ll be sending a guardcar for Paul. I want him to attend our strategy conference.”
He cleared his throat as though to say something else, then, without warning, turned and strode out, headed for the entry where she could hear more boxes being deposited. His voice sounded once from there, commanding and disdainful, the way he always spoke to servants when he was in a hurry: “The Lady Jessica’s in the Great Hall. Join her there immediately.”
The outer door slammed.
Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto’s father. It had been done by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old Duke’s middle years. He was portrayed in matador costume with a magenta cape flung over his left arm. The face looked young, hardly older than Leto’s now, and with the same hawk features, the same gray stare. She clenched her fists at her sides, glared at the painting.
“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!” she whispered.
“What are your orders, Noble Born?”
It was a woman’s voice, thin and stringy.
Jessica whirled, stared down at a knobby, gray-haired woman in a shapeless sack dress of bondsman brown. The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field that morning. Every native she had seen on this planet, Jessica thought, looked prune dry and undernourished. Yet, Leto had said they were strong and vital. And there were the eyes, of course—that wash of deepest, darkest blue without any white—secretive, mysterious. Jessica forced herself not to stare.
The woman gave a stiff-necked nod, said: “I am called the Shadout Mapes, Noble Born. What are your orders?”
“You may refer to me as ‘my Lady,’ ” Jessica said. “I’m not noble born. I’m the bound concubine of the Duke Leto.”
Again that strange nod, and the woman peered upward at Jessica with a sly questioning. “There’s a wife, then?”
“There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke’s only ... companion, the mother of his heir-designate.”
Even as she spoke, Jessica laughed inwardly at the pride behind her words. What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. ” Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.
A weird cry sounded from the road outside the house. It was repeated: “Soo-soo-Sook! Soo-soo-Sook!” Then: “Ikhut-eigh! Ikhut-eigh!” And again: “Soo-soo-Sook!”
“What is that?” Jessica asked. “I heard it several times as we drove through the streets this morning.”
“Only a water-seller, my Lady. But you’ve no need to interest yourself in such as they. The cistern here holds fifty thousand liters and it’s always kept full.” She glanced down at her dress. “Why, you know, my Lady, I don’t even have to wear my stillsuit here?” She cackled. “And me not even dead!”
Jessica hesitated, wanting to question this Fremen woman, needing data to guide her. But bringing order of the confusion in the castle was more imperative. Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark of wealth here.
“My husband told me of your title, Shadout,” Jessica said. “I recognized the word. It’s a very ancient word.”
“You know the ancient tongues then?” Mapes asked, and she waited with an odd intensity.
“Tongues are the Bene Gesserit’s first learning,” Jessica said. “I know the Bhotani Jib and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages.”
Mapes nodded. “Just as the legend says.”
And Jessica wondered: Why do Iplayout this sham? But the Bene Gesserit ways were devious and compelling.
“I know the Dark Things and the ways of the Great Mother,” Jessica said. She read the more obvious signs in Mapes’ actions and appearance, the petit betrayals. “Miseces prejia,” she said in the Chakobsa tongue. “Andral t’re pera! Trada cik buscakri miseces perakri—”
Mapes took a backward step, appeared poised to flee.
“I know many things,” Jessica said. “I know that you have borne children, that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have done violence and will yet do more violence. I know many things.”
In a low voice, Mapes said: “I meant no offense, my Lady.”
“You speak of the legend and seek answers,” Jessica said. “Beware the answers you may find. I know you came prepared for violence with a weapon in your bodice.”
“My Lady, I....”
“There’s a remote possibility you could draw my life’s blood,” Jessica said, “but in so doing you’d bring down more ruin than your wildest fears could imagine. There are worse things than dying, you know—even for an entire people.”
“My Lady!” Mapes pleaded. She appeared about to fall to her knees. “The weapon was sent as a gift to you should you prove to be the One.”
“And as the means of my death should I prove otherwise,” Jessica said. She waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bene Gesserit-trained so terrifying in combat.
Now we see which way the decision tips, she thought.
Slowly, Mapes reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath. A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took sheath in one hand and handle in the other, withdrew a milk-white blade, held it up. The blade seemed to shine and glitter with a light of its own. It was double-edged like a kindjal and the blade was perhaps twenty centimeters long.
“Do you know this, my Lady?” Mapes asked.
It could only be one thing, Jessica knew, the fabled crysknife of Arrakis, the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor and wild gossip.
“It’s a crysknife,” she said.
“Say it not lightly,” Mapes said. “Do you know its meaning?”
And Jessica thought: There was an edge to that question. Here’s the reason this Fremen has taken service with me, to ask that one question. My answer could precipitate violence or ... what? She seeks an answer from me: the meaning of a knife. She’s called the Shadout in the Chakobsa tongue. Knife, that’s “Death Maker” in Chakobsa. She’s getting restive. I must answer now. Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.
Jessica said: “It’s a maker—”
“Eighe-e-e-e-e-e!” Mapes wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation. She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection shooting around the room.
Jessica waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of death and then add the ancient word, but every sense
warned her now, all the deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle twitch.
The key word was ... maker.
Maker? Maker.
Still, Mapes held the knife as though ready to use it.
Jessica said: “Did you think that I, knowing the mysteries of the Great Mother, would not know the Maker?”
Mapes lowered the knife. “My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock.”
Jessica thought about the prophecy—the Shari-a and all the panoplia propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long centuries ago—long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene Gesserit’s need.
Well, that day had come.
Mapes returned knife to sheath, said: “This is an unfixed blade, my Lady. Keep it near you. More than a week away from flesh and it begins to disintegrate. It’s yours, a tooth of shai-hulud, for as long as you live.”
Jessica reached out her right hand, risked a gamble: “Mapes, you’ve sheathed that blade unblooded.”
With a gasp, Mapes dropped the sheathed knife into Jessica’s hand, tore open the brown bodice, wailing: “Take the water of my life!”
Jessica withdrew the blade from its sheath. How it glittered! She directed the point toward Mapes, saw a fear greater than death-panic come over the woman. Poison in the point? Jessica wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate scratch with the blade’s edge above Mapes’ left breast. There was a thick welling of blood that stopped almost immediately. Ultrafast coagulation, Jessica thought. A moisture-conserving mutation?
She sheathed the blade, said: “Button your dress, Mapes.”
Mapes obeyed, trembling. The eyes without whites stared at Jessica. “You are ours,” she muttered. “You are the One.”
There came another sound of unloading in the entry. Swiftly, Mapes grabbed the sheathed knife, concealed it in Jessica’s bodice. “Who sees that knife must be cleansed or slain!” she snarled. “You know that, my Lady!”
Dune (40th Anniversary Edition) Page 7
