Duncan shook his head as they went down the steep, winding staircase to the landing field and the waiting ’thopter. “One day you’ll die, and then you’ll be halfway to understanding.”
True forgiveness is a rarer thing than melange.
—Fremen wisdom
The crowd surrounding Alia’s Fane surged with an energy of humanity. So many lives, so many minds, all in a single mood. . . . Standing on the balcony of the temple high over the blur of population, Jessica knew what Paul must have felt as Emperor, what Alia now felt daily. With the white sun of Arrakis high overhead, the Fane’s tower became a gnomon, casting a shadow blade across the sundial of humanity.
“Thank you for doing this, Alia,” Princess Irulan said, standing proud and cool, but not bothering to cover her sincere gratitude and relief.
Alia looked back at her. “I do it out of necessity. My mother has spoken to me on your behalf, and she made good sense. Besides, this is what Paul would have wanted.”
Next to the Princess, Jessica folded her hands together. “It is an open wound that needs to be healed.”
“But there are conditions,” Alia added.
Irulan’s gaze didn’t waver. “There are always conditions. I understand.”
“Good, then it’s time.” Without further delay, Alia stepped forth into the bright glare of the open sunlight. When the people below noticed the movement, their voices thundered upward like a physical force. Alia stood facing the throng, a smile fixed on her countenance, her hair loose, feral.
“My father was never greeted like that when he addressed the people in Kaitain,” Irulan whispered to Jessica.
“After Muad’Dib, the people will never again look upon their leaders the same way.” Jessica understood how perilous, how seductive that power could be; she also understood that Paul had unleashed the Jihad intentionally, knowing what he did. And it got out of his control.
Long ago, in a Fremen cave, she had greatly feared his choice of touching a flame to the religion-soaked kindling of desert traditions. It was a dangerous path, and it had proved to be as treacherous as she’d feared. How could he think he could just shut it away when its usefulness was over? Jessica feared now for Alia in that storm, and for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, as well.
Alia spoke, her amplified voice echoing across the great square. The crowd dropped into a hushed silence, absorbing her words. “My people, we have been through a difficult and dangerous time. The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood teaches that we must adapt. The Fremen say that we must avenge. And I say that we must heal.
“The conspirators against Muad’Dib, those responsible for the plot against him, were punished. I ordered their executions, and we have taken back their water.” She turned and extended her hand into the tower chamber, summoning Irulan. “But there is another wound we must heal.”
The Princess squared her shoulders and emerged into the sunlight beside Alia.
“You may have heard rumors that Princess Irulan had some involvement in the conspiracy. A few of you wonder how much she is to blame.”
Now the murmur grew like a low, synchronous growl. Out of sight in the chamber, Jessica clenched her hands. She had convinced Alia what she must do, and her daughter decided on this wise course of action. But right now—with a single word, with all these people under her thrall—Alia could change her mind and command Irulan’s death, and no force in the universe could stop it. They would break into the tower and rip her apart.
“Let there be no further doubts,” Alia said, and Jessica let out a long, slow sigh of relief. “Irulan was my brother’s wife. She loved him. Therefore, it is out of my own love for my brother, for Muad’Dib, that I proclaim her to be innocent.”
Now Jessica stepped into view, so that the three powerful women, the three surviving women who had so influenced the life of Paul-Muad’Dib, stood together. “And as the mother of Muad’Dib, I shall write and seal a document that completely exonerates Princess Irulan of any crimes of which she has been accused. Let her be guiltless before your eyes.”
Alia lifted her arms into the air. “Irulan is the official biographer of Muad’Dib, anointed by him. She will write the truth so that all can discover the true nature of Muad’Dib. Blessed be his name throughout the annals of time.”
The automatic rumbling response came back from below: “Blessed be his name throughout the annals of time.”
The three women stood for an extended moment and clasped hands, so that the people could see their harmony—mother, sister, and wife.
The Princess said quietly to Alia, “Again, I am indebted to you.”
“You have always been indebted to me, Irulan. And now that we have passed this troublesome distraction, we’ll see how best we can put you to use.”
Muad’Dib was never born and never died. He is eternal, like the stars, the moons, and the heavens.
—The Rite of Arrakeen
No mother should have to attend the funeral of her son.
In a private box overlooking Arrakeen’s central square, Jessica and Gurney stood beside Alia, Duncan, Stilgar, and the newly pardoned Princess Irulan. A funeral coach approached them, draped in black and pulled by two Harmonthep lions. Irulan had suggested this touch of Corrino symbolism, a tradition that had accompanied the mourning of emperors for centuries.
Jessica knew that this would be nothing like a traditional Fremen funeral. Alia had planned the ceremony, insisting that the carefully crafted—and continuously growing—legend of Muad’Dib demanded it. The whole Plain of Arrakeen, it seemed, could not hold the millions who had come to mourn Muad’Dib.
Just past sunset, the sky was awash with pastels; long shadows stretched across the city. Numerous observation craft flew overhead, some at high altitude. As the sky began to darken, dozens of commissioned Guildships streaked through the atmosphere releasing plumes of ionized metal gases, pumping up the debris in the magnetic field lines to ignite a wondrous aurora show. A blizzard of tiny pellets sprinkled into low, swiftly decaying orbits that created an almost constant meteor shower, as if the heavens were shedding fiery tears for the death of such a great man.
Seven days of pageantry would reach a climax this evening in a celebration of Muad’Dib’s life, rites meant to chronicle and praise Paul’s greatness. As Jessica watched, she felt that the overblown display was more of a reminder of the excesses committed in his name.
An hour earlier, Jessica had watched two Fedaykin place the large funeral urn inside the coach, an ornate jar that should have contained Muad’Dib’s water from the deathstill. But the vessel was empty, because Paul’s body had never been found, despite exhaustive searches. The hungry sands had swallowed him without a trace, as was fitting.
By leaving no body, Paul had enlarged upon his own mythos, and set new rumors in motion. Some people fervently believed he was not actually dead; for years to come, they would no doubt report seeing mysterious blind men who might be Muad’Dib.
She felt a chill as she recalled the report of Tandis, the last Fremen who had seen Paul alive before her son left Sietch Tabr and wandered into the hostile vastness. Paul’s last words, which he’d called back into the night, were, “Now I am free.”
Jessica also remembered a time when Paul was only fifteen, immediately after his ordeal with Reverend Mother Mohiam’s gom jabbar. “Why do you test for humans?” he had asked the old woman.
“To set you free,” Mohiam had said.
Now I am free!
Had Paul, in the end, seen his unorthodox exit as a means to return to his human nature and attempt to leave deification behind?
From the observation platform, she gazed toward the high Shield Wall splashed with fiery bronze light in the last glimmers of dusk. That was the place where Muad’Dib and his fanatical Fremen army had broken through in their great victory against the Corrino Emperor.
Jessica recalled Paul at various ages, from a bright child to a dutiful young nobleman, to the Emperor of the Known Universe and the leader of a Ji
had that swept across the galaxy. You may have become Fremen, she thought, but I am still your mother. I will always love you, no matter where you have gone, or what path you took to get there.
As the plodding lions pulled the coach toward the viewing stand, a cadre of uniformed Fedaykin and yellow-robed priests marched alongside. Ahead of them, two heroes of the Jihad led the procession with fluttering green-and-black Atreides banners. The immense, murmurous crowd parted for the coach’s passage.
The throngs were beyond anyone’s ability to count, millions and millions of people crowded into the city and into camps outside, Fremen as well as offworlders. The water softness of the new arrivals was readily apparent, not only in their smooth, unweathered flesh, but in their colorful raiment, faux stillsuits, or outlandish outfits that had been made especially for this occasion. Even those who tried to dress like natives were obviously unauthentic. It was a dangerous time and place for the unwary. There had been killings of outsiders who purportedly did not show the proper respect for the Emperor Muad’Dib.
Jessica fell into a particular category of offworlder: one that had adapted. Upon first arriving on Arrakis sixteen years earlier, she and her family had been softer than they’d realized, but time spent here had hardened them physically and mentally. While taking refuge from Harkonnen treachery, Jessica and her son had lived closer to the Fremen than virtually any other offworlder ever had. They had genuinely become part of the desert, harmonious with it.
Paul had consumed the Water of Life and nearly died, but in the process he gained unfettered access to the sheltered Fremen world. Thus, he not only became one of them, he became them in totality. Muad’Dib was not merely one individual; he encompassed all Fremen who had ever been born and ever would exist. He was their Messiah, the chosen one sent by Shai-Hulud to show them the path to eternal glory. And now, having walked off into the desert, he made the place even more sacred than before. He embodied the desert and its ways, and the winds would spread his spirit across all of human existence.
The funeral coach came to a stop in front of the viewing stand. The robed Fremen driver sat high on top. Showing no outward grief, Alia issued a command to her aides.
Attendants removed the black drapes from the coach, while others unhitched the pair of lions and led them away. The driver climbed down, bowed reverently to the idea of what it contained, then backed into the crowd.
A glow brightened inside the ornate coach, and its sides began to open like the broad petals of a flower, revealing Muad’Dib’s urn inside on a plush purple platform. The urn began to glow as if from an inner sun, shining light onto the surrounding square in the thickening dusk. Some in the crowd fell to their knees attempting to prostrate themselves, but there was not much room for them to move.
“Even in death, my brother inspires his people,” Alia said to her mother. “ ‘Muad’Dib, the One Who Points the Way.’ ”
Jessica comforted herself with the knowledge that Paul would live forever in the memories, stories, and traditions passed on from generation to generation, from planet to planet. Still, deep inside, she could not accept that Paul was dead. He was too strong, too vibrant, too much a force of nature. But his own prescience, his own immensity of grief over what he’d done, had defeated him.
Here, at his funeral, Jessica saw distraught, sorrow-struck people everywhere . . . and felt uncomfortably hollow inside.
Billions and billions of people had died in the name of Muad’Dib and his Jihad. All told, he had sterilized ninety planets, wiping them clean of life. But she knew it had been necessary, made inevitable by his prescience. It had taken her a long time to understand, to believe, that Paul had truly known the righteousness of his actions. Jessica had doubted him, almost turned against him with tragic consequences . . . but she’d eventually learned the truth. She accepted the reality that her son was correct in his assertion that more of humanity would die if he had not taken such a difficult course.
Now, all of the deaths focused into one: Paul Orestes Atreides.
As the urn glowed, Jessica grappled with her feelings of love and loss: alien concepts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, but she didn’t care. This is the funeral for my son. She would gladly have let the people see her sadness. But she still could not openly grieve.
Jessica knew what would come next. Upon reaching its maximum brightness, the empty urn would rise on suspensors over the plaza and cast brilliant light over the enthralled crowds below, like the sun of Muad’Dib’s existence, until it rose out of sight into the night sky, symbolically ascending to heaven. Ostentatious, perhaps, but the crowds would view it with awe. It was as grand a show as Rheinvar the Magnificent himself would have put on, and Alia had planned the ceremony with a disturbing intensity and passion.
Now, as the bodiless urn continued to brighten, Jessica heard heavy engines and flapping ornithopter wings overhead. Looking up into the darkening sky that shimmered with artificial auroras and shooting stars, she saw a group of flying craft in a tight formation spewing clouds of dense vapors, coagulating gases that spilled and swirled like a congealing thundercloud. An unexpected addition to the show? With a sound like shattering rocks, a sharp thunderclap rang out above the crowd in the square, followed by a low, menacing rumble.
The people turned away from the funeral urn, sure that this was also part of the ceremony, but Jessica knew it had not been part of the plan. Alarmed, she whispered to Alia, “What is this?”
The young woman whirled, her eyes flashing. “Duncan, find out what’s going on.”
Before the ghola could move, a massive, scowling face appeared on the underside of the cloud, a projection that shone through the rolling knot of vapors. Jessica recognized the countenance instantly: Bronso of Ix.
From the fading rumble of thunder emerged a voice that boomed across the plaza. “Turn away from this circus sham and realize that Muad’Dib was just a man, not a god! He was the son of a Landsraad duke, and no more. Do not confuse him with God—for that dishonors both. Open your eyes to these foolish delusions.”
As the crowd howled in outrage, the glow from the funeral urn sputtered and went out, the suspensors failing so that the urn fizzled and crashed into the square. Mourners cursed the sky, demanding the blood of the man who had disrupted their sacred ceremony.
Overhead, the projected face broke into fragments as evening breezes dispersed the artificial thunderhead. The linked ’thopters simultaneously dropped out of the sky and crashed in multiple fireballs onto the rooftops of the sprawling government buildings that ringed the square.
The screaming crowd ran in all directions, trampling each other. Emergency sirens sounded, while police and medics rushed forth, shifting electronic containment barriers. Alia barked orders and sent zealous priests out into the crowd, ostensibly to calm them but also to search for any accomplices of Bronso.
On their observation stand, Jessica stood her ground. From her vantage, the injuries looked minimal, and she hoped there were no deaths. She grudgingly admired Bronso’s cleverness, knowing he had used Ixian technology to produce his own show. Jessica knew full well, too, that he was skilled enough to elude capture. Bronso himself would be nowhere close to Arrakeen.
Water is life. To say that one drop of water is insignificant is to say that one life is insignificant. That is a thing I cannot accept.
—The Stilgar Commentaries
To Alia, Bronso’s disruptive actions seemed more an insult directed at her, rather than mud thrown at the memory of Paul. She dispatched searchers and spies to locate the perpetrators, rounding up hundreds of suspects in due course.
While Jessica could not approve of what Bronso had done to ruin the solemn ceremony, she did not reject his underlying motives. In fact, she suspected that Paul himself would have disliked the ostentatious nature of the funeral itself. Though her son had voluntarily cultivated a demigod’s image, he had realized his mistake, had tried to alter course in any way he knew how.
On the morning after the funera
l ceremony, Jessica found Stilgar at the edge of the Arrakeen Spaceport, supervising the removal of Fremen clan banners, flags of Landsraad Houses, and pennants from conquered worlds.
Jessica tilted her head back to watch a descending water-ship appear like a bright spot of reflected sunlight high above, dropping in a rippling plume of exhaust and ionized air, flanked by armed military craft to defend the cargo. A crackle and boom split the sky with a familiar non-thunder sound as the decelerating ship braked against the atmosphere above the small landing area.
Other vessels had landed at the spaceport, the air rippling with heat around the hulls. Egress doors opened with a hiss of equalizing pressures. A steward checked the ramp and tromped down to hand documents to one of the spaceport administrators who wore the yellow robe of a Qizara. Fuel technicians rushed forward to hook charge linkages to the suspensor engines.
All around, more shuttles, cargo haulers, and frigates were landing, one of them with a bone-jarring shriek of maladjusted engines. Ground-cars whirred up to cargo doors; manual laborers lined up for their shifts and invoked the blessings of Muad’Dib before performing their tasks.
Jessica stood next to Stilgar, who kept his voice low, his gaze straight ahead at all the spaceport activity. “I wanted to attend a farewell ceremony for my friend Usul from Sietch Tabr. But that funeral was not a Fremen thing.” He gestured to the still-milling crowds, the work crews, the heavy equipment. Souvenir vendors still hawked their trinkets, some of them reducing their prices to get rid of leftover merchandise, others raising prices because such items were now more rare and meaningful.
“Your daughter wants to organize a water ceremony for Chani, too.” The stern and conservative Naib shook his head. “After seeing what the Regent arranged for Muad’Dib, I have my concerns that Chani will be honored properly, in the way that she and her tribe would have wished.”
The Winds of Dune Page 6
