IN THE stillness of the cavern, Jessica heard the scrape of sand on rock as people moved, the distant bird calls that Stilgar had said were the signals of his watchmen.
The great plastic hood-seals had been removed from the cave's opening. She could see the march of evening shadows across the lip of rock in front of her and the open basin beyond. She sensed the daylight leaving them, sensed it in the dry heat as well as the shadows. She knew her trained awareness soon would give her what these Fremen obviously had--the ability to sense even the slightest change in the air's moisture.
How they had scurried to tighten their stillsuits when the cave was opened! Deep within the cave, someone began chanting: "Ima trava okolo!
I korenja okolo!"
Jessica translated silently: These are ashes! And these are roots!"
The funeral ceremony for Jamis was beginning.
She looked out at the Arrakeen sunset, at the banked decks of color in the sky. Night was beginning to utter its shadows along the distant rocks and the dunes.
Yet the heat persisted.
Heat forced her thoughts onto water and the observed fact that this whole people could be trained to be thirsty only at given times.
Thirst.
She could remember moonlit waves on Caladan throwing white robes over rocks ... and the wind heavy with dampness. Now the breeze that fingered her robes seared the patches of exposed skin at cheeks and forehead. The new nose plugs irritated her, and she found herself overly conscious of the tube that trailed down across her face into the suit, recovering her breath's moisture.
The suit itself was a sweatbox.
"Your suit will be more comfortable when you've adjusted to a lower water content in your body, " Stillgar had said.
She knew he was right, but the knowledge made this moment no more comfortable. The unconscious preoccupation with water here weighed on her mind. No, she corrected herself: it was preoccupation with moisture.
And that was a more subtle and profound matter.
She heard approaching footsteps, turned to see Paul come out of the cave's depths trailed by the elfin-faced Chani.
There's another thing, Jessica thought. Paul must be cautioned about their women. One of these desert women would not do as wife to a Duke. As concubine, yes, but not as wife.
Then she wondered at herself, thinking: Have I been infected with his schemes? And she saw how well she had been conditioned. I can think of the marital needs of royalty without once weighing my own concubinage. Yet ... I was more than concubine.
"Mother."
Paul stopped in front of her. Chani stood at his elbow.
"Mother, do you know what they're doing back there?"
Jessica looked at the dark patch of his eyes staring out from the hood. "I think so."
"Chani showed me ... because I'm supposed to see it and give my ... permission for the weighing of the water."
Jessica looked at Chani.
"They're recovering Jamis' water," Chani said, and her thin voice came out nasal past the nose plugs. "It's the rule. The flesh belongs to the person, but his water belongs to the tribe ... except in the combat."
"They say the water's mine," Paul said.
Jessica wondered why this should make her suddenly alert and cautious.
"Combat water belongs to the winner," Chani said. "It's because you have to fight in the open without stillsuits. The winner has to get his water back that he loses while fighting."
"I don't want his water," Paul muttered. He felt that he was a part of many images moving simultaneously in a fragmenting way that was disconcerting to the inner eye. He could not be certain what he would do, but of one thing he was positive: he did not want the water distilled out of Jamis' flesh.
"It's ... water," Chani said.
Jessica marveled at the way she said it. "Water." So much meaning in a simple sound. A Bene Gesserit axiom came to Jessica's mind: "Survival is the ability to swim in strange water." And Jessica thought: Paul and I, we must find the currents and patterns in these strange waters ... if we're to survive.
"You will accept the water," Jessica said.
She recognized the tone in her voice. She had used that same tone once with Leto, telling her lost Duke that he would accept a large sum offered for his support in a questionable venture--because money maintained power for the Atreides.
On Arrakis, water was money. She saw that clearly.
Paul remained silent, knowing then that he would do as she ordered--not because she ordered it, but because her tone of voice had forced him to re-evaluate. To refuse the water would be to break with accepted Fremen practice.
Presently Paul recalled the words of 467 Kalima in Yueh's O.C. Bible. He said: "From water does all life begin."
Jessica stared at him. Where did he learn that quotation? she asked herself. He hasn't sutdied the mysteries.
"Thus it is spoken," Chani said. "Giudichar mantene: It is written in the Shah-Nama that water was the first of all things created."
For no reason she could explain (and this bothered her more than the sensation), Jessica suddenly shuddered. She turned away to hide her confusion and was just in time to see the sunset. A violent calamity of color spilled over the sky as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.
"It is time!"
The voice was Stilgar's ringing in the cavern. "Jamis' weapon has been killed. Jamis has been called by Him, by Shai-hulud, who has ordained the phases for the moons that daily wane and--in the end--appear as bent and withered twigs." Stilgar's voice lowered. "Thus it is with Jamis."
Silence fell like a blanket on the cavern.
Jessica saw the gray-shadow movement of Stilgar like a ghost figure within the dark inner reaches. She glanced back at the basin, sensing the coolness.
"The friends of Jamis will approach," Stilgar said.
Men moved behind Jessica, dropping a curtain across the opening. A single glowglobe was lighted overhead far back in the cave. Its yellow glow picked out an inflowing of human figures. Jessica heard the rustling of the robes.
Chani took a step away as though pulled by the light.
Jessica bent close to Paul's ear, speaking in the family code: "Follow their lead; do as they do. It will be a simple ceremony to placate the shade of Jamis."
It will be more than that, Paul thought. And he felt a wrenching sensation within his awareness as though he were trying to grasp some thing in motion and render it motionless.
Chani glided back to Jessica's side, took her hand. "Come, Sayyadina. We must sit apart."
Paul watched them move off into the shadows, leaving him alone. He felt abandoned.
The men who had fixed the curtain came up beside him.
"Come, Usul."
He allowed himself to be guided forward, to be pushed into a circle of people being formed around Stilgar, who stood beneath the glowglobe and beside a bundled, curving, and angular shape gathered beneath a robe on the rock floor.
The troop crouched down at a gesture from Stilgar, their robes hissing with the movement. Paul settled with them, watching Stilgar, noting the way the overhead globe made pits of his eyes and brightened the touch of green fabric at his neck. Paul shifted his attention to the robe-covered mound at Stilgar's feet, recognized the handle of a baliset protruding from the fabric.
"The spirit leaves the body's water when the first moon rises," Stilgar intoned. "Thus it is spoken. When we see the first moon rise this night, whom will it summon?"
"Jamis," the troop responded.
Stilgar turned full circle on one heel, passing his gaze across the ring of faces. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the hawk plane stooped upon us at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was Jamis pulled me to safety."
He bent over the pile beside him, lifted away the robe. "I take this robe as a friend of Jamis--leader's right." He draped the robe over a shoulder, straightening.
Now, Paul saw the contents of the mound exposed: the pale glistening gray of a stillsuit, a battered literjon, a
kerchief with a small book in its center, the bladeless handle of a crysknife, an empty sheath, a folded pack, a paracompass, a distrans, a thumper, a pile of fist-sized metallic hooks, an assortment of what looked like small rocks within a fold of cloth, a clump of bundled feathers ... and the baliset exposed beside the folded pack.
So Jamis played the baliset, Paul thought. The instrument reminded him of Gurney Halleck and all that was lost. Paul knew with his memory of the future in the past that some chance-lines could produce a meeting with Halleck, but the reunions were few and shadowed. They puzzled him. The uncertainty factor touched him with wonder. Does it mean that something I will do ... that I may do, could destroy Gurney ... or bring him back to life ... or....
Paul swallowed, shook his head.
Again, Stilgar bent over the mound.
"For Jamis' woman and for the guards," he said. The small rocks and the book were taken into the folds of his robe.
"Leader's right," the troop intoned.
"The marker for Jamis' coffee service," Stilgar said, and he lifted a flat disc of green metal. "That it shall be given to Usul in suitable ceremony when we return to the sietch."
"Leader's right," the troop intoned.
Lastly, he took the crysknife handle and stood with it. "For the funeral plain," he said.
"For the funeral plain," the troop responded.
At her place in the circle across from Paul, Jessica nodded, recognizing the ancient source of the rite, and she thought: The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture--it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead. She looked across at Paul, wondering: Will he see it? Will he know what to do?'
"We are friends of Jamis," Stilgar said. "We are not wailing for our dead like a pack of garvarg."
A gray-bearded man to Paul's left stood up. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. He crossed to the mound, lifted the distrans. "When our water went below minim at the siege at Two Brids, Jamis shared." The man returned to his place in the circle.
Am I supposed to say I was a friend of Jamis? Paul wondered. Do they expect me to take something from that pile? He saw faces turn toward him, turn away. They do expect it!
Another man across from Paul arose, went to the pack and removed the paracompass. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the patrol caught us at Bight-of-the-Cliff and I was wounded, Jamis drew them off so the wounded could be saved." He returned to his place in the circle.
Again, the faces turned toward Paul, and he saw the expectancy in them, lowered his eyes. An elbow nudged him and a voice hissed: "Would you bring the destruction on us?"
How can I say I was his friend? Paul wondered.
Another figure arose from the circle opposite Paul and, as the hooded face came into the light, he recognized his mother. She removed a kerchief from the mount. "I was a friend of Jamis," she said. "When the spirit of spirits within him saw the needs of truth, that spirit withdrew and spared my son." She returned to her place.
And Paul recalled the scorn in his mother's voice as she had confronted him after the fight. "How does it feel to be a killer?"
Again, he saw the faces turned toward him, felt the anger and fear in the troop. A passage his mother had once filmbooked for him on "The Cult of the Dead" flickered through Paul's mind. He knew what he had to do.
Slowly, Paul got to his feet.
A sigh passed around the circle.
Paul felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the baliset. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.
"I was a friend of Jamis," Paul whispered.
He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Jamis taught me ... that ... when you kill ... you pay for it. I wish I'd known Jamis better."
Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the circle, sank to the rock floor.
A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"
It was taken up around the ring: "Usul gives moisture to the dead!"
He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.
Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead. " It was a gift to the shadow world--tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt.
Nothing on this planet had so forcefully hammered into her the ultimate value of water. Not the water-sellers, not the dried skins of the natives, not stillsuits or the rules of water discipline. Here there was a substance more precious than all others--it was life itself and entwined all around with symbolism and ritual.
Water.
"I touched his cheek," someone whispered. "I felt the gift."
At first, the fingers touching his face frightened Paul. He clutched the cold handle of the baliset, feeling the strings bite his palm. Then he saw the faces beyond the groping hands--the eyes wide and wondering.
Presently, the hands withdrew. The funeral ceremony resumed. But now there was a subtle space around Paul, a drawing back as the troop honored him by a respectful isolation.
The ceremony ended with a low chant: "Full moon calls thee--
Shai-hulud shalt thou see;
Red the night, dusky sky,
Bloody death didst thou die.
We pray to a moon: she is round--
Luck with us will then abound,
What we seek for shall be found
In the land of solid ground."
A bulging sack remained at Stilgar's feet. He crouched, placed his palms against it. Someone came up beside him, crouched at his elbow, and Paul recognized Chani's face in the hood shadow.
"Jamis carried thirty-three liters and seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms of the tribe's water," Chani said. "I bless it now in the presence of a Sayyadina. Ekkeri-akairi, this is the water, fillissin-follasy of Paul-Muad' Dib! Kivi a-kavi, never the more, nakalas! Nakelas! to be measured and counted, ukair-an! by the heartbeats jan-jan-jan of our friend ... Jamis."
In an abrupt and profound silence, Chani turned, stared at Paul. Presently she said: "Where I am flame be thou the coals. Where I am dew be thou the water."
"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.
"To Paul-Muad'Dib goes this portion," Chani said. "May he guard it for the tribe, preserving it against careless loss. May he be generous with it in time of need. May he pass it on in his time for the good of the tribe."
"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.
I must accept that water, Paul thought. Slowly, he arose, made his way to Chani's side. Stilgar stepped back to make room for him, took the baliset gently from his hand.
"Kneel," Chani said.
Paul knelt.
She guided his hands to the waterbag, held them against the resilient surface. "With this water the tribe entrusts thee," she said. "Jamis is gone from it. Take it in peace." She stood, pulling Paul up with her.
Stilgar returned the baliset, extended a small pile of metal rings in one palm. Paul looked at them, seeing the different sizes, the way the light of the glowglobe reflected off them.
Chani took the largest ring, held it on a finger. "Thirty liters," she said. One by one, she took the others, showing each to Paul, counting them. "Two liters; one liter; seven watercounters of one drachm each; one watercounter of three-thirty-seconds drachms. In all--thirty-three liters and seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms."
She held them up on her finger for Paul to see.
"Do you accept them?" Stilgar asked.
Paul swallowed, nodded. "Yes."
"Later," Chani said, "I will show you how to tie them in a kerchief so they won't rattle and give you away when you need silence." She extended her hand.
"Will you ... hold them for me?" Paul asked.
Chani turned a startled glance on Stilgar.
He smiled, said, "Paul-Muad'Dib who i
s Usul does not yet know our ways, Chani. Hold his watercounters without commitment until it's time to show him the manner of carrying them."
She nodded, whipped a ribbon of cloth from beneath her robe, linked the rings onto it with an intricate over and under weaving, hesitated, then stuffed them into the sash beneath her robe.
I missed something there, Paul thought. He sensed the feeling of humor around him, something bantering in it, and his mind linked up a prescient memory: watercounters offered to a woman--courtship ritual.
"Watermasters," Stilgar said.
The troop arose in a hissing of robes. Two men stepped out, lifted the waterbag. Stilgar took down the glowglobe, led the way with it into the depths of the cave.
Paul was pressed in behind Chani, noted the buttery glow of light over rock walls, the way the shadows danced, and he felt the troop's lift of spirits contained in a hushed air of expectancy.
Jessica, pulled into the end of the troop by eager hands, hemmed around by jostling bodies, suppressed a moment of panic. She had recognized fragments of the ritual, identified the shards of Chakobsa and Bhotani-jib in the words, and she knew the wild violence that could explode out of these seemingly simple moments.
Jan-jan-jan, she thought. Go-go-go.
It was like a child's game that had lost all inhibition in adult hands.
Stilgar stopped at a yellow rock wall. He pressed an outcropping and the wall swung silently away from him, opening along an irregular crack. He led the way through past a dark honeycomb lattice that directed a cool wash of air across Paul when he passed it.
Paul turned a questioning stare on Chani, tugged her arm. "That air felt damp," he said.
"Sh-h-h-h," she whispered.
But a man behind them said: "Plenty of moisture in the trap tonight. Jamis' way of telling us he's satisfied."
Jessica passed through the secret door, heard it close behind. She saw how the Fremen slowed while passing the honeycomb lattice, felt the dampness of the air as she came opposite it.
Windtrap! she thought. They've a concealed windtrap somewhere on the surface to funnel air down here into cooler regions and precipitate the moisture from it.
They passed through another rock door with latticework above it, and the door closed behind them. The draft of air at their backs carried a sensation of moisture clearly perceptible to both Jessica and Paul.
At the head of the troop, the glowglobe in Stilgar's hands dropped below the level of the heads in front of Paul. Presently he felt steps beneath his feet, curving down to the left. Light reflected back up across hooded heads and a winding movement of people spiraling down the steps.
Dune Page 38
