Book Two MUAD’DIB 13 страница

Ah-h-h-h-h. . . the old Reverend Mother.

“I have met the Reverend Mother Ramallo, ” Jessica said. “She is gone, but she remains. Let her memory be honored in the rite.

Now, where did I get those words? Jessica wondered.

And she realized they came from another memory, the life that had been given to her and now was part of herself. Something about that gift felt incomplete, though.

”Let them have their orgy, “ the other-memory said within her. ”They’ve little enough pleasure out of living. Yes, and you and I need this little time to become acquainted before I recede and pour out through your memories. Already, I feel myself being tied to bits of you. Ah-h-h, you’ve a mind filled with interesting things. So many things I’d never imagined. “

And the memory-mind encapsulated within her opened itself to Jessica, permitting a view down a wide corridor to other Reverend Mothers until there seemed no end to them.

Jessica recoiled, fearing she would become lost in an ocean of oneness. Still, the corridor remained, revealing to Jessica that the Fremen culture was far older than she had suspected.

There had been Fremen on Poritrin, she saw, a people grown soft with an easy planet, fair game for Imperial raiders to harvest and plant human colonies on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus.

Oh, the wailing Jessica sensed in that parting.

Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: ”They denied us the Hajj! “

Jessica saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegeuse down that inner corridor, saw the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rossak and Harmonthep. Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower. And she saw the thread of the past carried by Sayyadina after Sayyadina–first by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own Reverend Mothers with the discovery of the poison drug on Rossak. . . and now developed to subtle strengthen Arrakis in the discovery of the Water of Life.

Far down the inner corridor, another voice screamed: ”Never to forgive! Never to forget! “

But Jessica’s attention was focused on the revelation of the Water of Life, seeing its source: the liquid exhalation of a dying sandworm, a maker. And as she saw the killing of it in her new memory, she suppressed a gasp.

The creature was drowned!

”Mother, are you all right? ” Paul’s voice intruded on her, and Jessica struggled out of the inner awareness to stare up at him, conscious of duty to him, but resenting his presence.

I’m like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness–until one day the ability to feel is forced into them.

The thought hung in her mind, an enclosing awareness.

And I say: “Look! I have no hands! ” But the people all around me say: “What are hands? ” “

”Are you all right? “ Paul repeated.

”Yes. “

”Is this all right for me to drink? “ He gestured to the sack in Chani’s hands. ”They want me to drink it. “

She heard the hidden meaning in his words, realized he had detected the poison in the original, unchanged substance, that he was concerned for her. It occurred to Jessica then to wonder about the limits of Paul’s prescience. His question revealed much to her.

”You may drink it, “ she said. ”It has been changed. “ And she looked beyond him to see Stilgar staring down at her, the dark-dark eyes studying.

”Now, we know you cannot be false, “ he said.

She sensed hidden meaning here, too, but the muzziness of the drug was overpowering her senses. How warm it was and soothing. How beneficent these Fremen to bring her into the fold of such companionship.

Paul saw the drug take hold of his mother.

He searched his memory–the fixed past, the flux-lines of the possible futures. It was like scanning through arrested instants of time, disconcerting to the lens of the inner eye. The fragments were difficult to understand when snatched out of the flux.

This drug–he could assemble knowledge about it, understand what it was doing to his mother, but the knowledge lacked a natural rhythm, lacked a system of mutual reflection.

He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future.

Things persisted in not being what they seemed.

”Drink it, “ Chani said. She waved the hornspout of a watersack under his nose.

Paul straightened, staring at Chani. He felt carnival excitement in the air. He knew what would happen if he drank this spice drug with its quintessence of the substance that brought the change onto him. He would return to the vision of pure time, of time-become-space. It would perch him on the dizzying summit and defy him to understand.

From behind Chani, Stilgar said: ”Drink it, lad. You delay the rite. “

Paul listened to the crowd then, hearing the wildness in their voices– ”Lisan al-Gaib, “ they said. ”Muad’Dib! “ He looked down at his mother. She appeared peacefully asleep in a sitting position–her breathing even and deep. A phrase out of the future that was his lonely past came into his mind: ”She sleeps in the Waters of Life. “

Chani tugged at his sleeve.

Paul took the hornspout into his mouth, hearing the people shout. He felt the liquid gush into his throat as Chani pressed the sack, sensed giddiness in the fumes. Chani removed the spout, handed the sack into hands that reached for it from the floor of the cavern. His eyes focused on her arm, the green band of mourning there.

As she straightened, Chani saw the direction of his gaze, said: ”I can mourn him even in the happiness of the waters. This was something he gave us. “ She put her hand into his, pulling him along the ledge. ”We are alike in a thing, Usul: We have each lost a father to the Harkonnens. ” Paul followed her. He felt that his head had been separated from his body and restored with odd connections. His legs were remote and rubbery.

They entered a narrow side passage, its walls dimly lighted by spaced-out glowglobes. Paul felt the drug beginning to have its unique effect on him, opening time like a flower. He found need to steady himself against Chani as they turned through another shadowed tunnel. The mixture of whipcord and softness he felt beneath her robe stirred his blood. The sensation mingled with the work of the drug, folding future and past into the present, leaving him the thinnest margin of trinocular focus.

“I know you, Chani, ” he whispered. “We’ve sat upon a ledge above the sand while I soothed your fears. We’ve caressed in the dark of the sietch. We’ve. . . ” He found himself losing focus, tried to shake his head, stumbled.

Chani steadied him, led him through thick hangings into the yellow warmth of a private apartment–tow tables, cushions, a sleeping pad beneath an orange spread.

Paul grew aware that they had stopped, that Chani stood facing him, and that her eyes betrayed a look of quiet terror.

“You must tell me, ” she whispered.

“You are Sihaya, ” he said, “the desert spring. ”

“When the tribe shares the Water, ” she said, “we’re together–all of us. We. . . share. I can. . . sense the others with me, but I’m afraid to share with you. ”

“Why? ”

He tried to focus on her, but past and future were merging into the present, blurring her image. He saw her in countless ways and positions and settings.

“There’s something frightening in you, ” she said. “When I took you away from the others. . . I did it because I could feel what the others wanted. You. . . press on people. You. . . make us see things! ”

He forced himself to speak distinctly: “What do you see? ”

She looked down at her hands. “I see a child. . . in my arms. It’s our child, yours and mine. ” She put a hand to her mouth. “How can I know every feature of you? ”

They’ve a little of the talent, his mind told him. But they suppress it because it terrifies.

In a moment of clarity, he saw how Chani was trembling.

“What is it you want to say? ” he asked.

“Usul, ” she whispered, and still she trembled.

“You cannot back into the future, ” he said.

A profound compassion for her swept through him. He pulled her against him, stroked her head. “Chani, Chani, don’t fear. ”

“Usul, help me, ” she cried.

As she spoke, he felt the drug complete its work within him, ripping away the curtains to let him see the distant gray turmoil of his future.

“You’re so quiet, ” Chani said.

He held himself poised in the awareness, seeing time stretch out in its weird dimension, delicately balanced yet whirling, narrow yet spread like a net gathering countless worlds and forces, a tightwire that he must walk, yet a teeter-totter on which he balanced.

On one side he could see the Imperium, a Harkonnen called Feyd-Rautha who flashed toward him like a deadly blade, the Sardaukar raging off their planet to spread pogrom on Arrakis, the Guild conniving and plotting, the Bene Gesserit with their scheme of selective breeding. They lay massed like a thunderhead on his horizon, held back by no more than the Fremen and their Muad’Dib, the sleeping giant Fremen poised for their wild crusade across the universe.

Paul felt himself at the center, at the pivot where the whole structure turned, walking a thin wire of peace with a measure of happiness, Chani at his side. He could see it stretching ahead of him, a time of relative quiet in a hidden sietch, a moment of peace between periods of violence.

“There’s no other place for peace, ” he said.

“Usul, you’re crying, ” Chani murmured. “Usul, my strength, do you give moisture to the dead? To whose dead? ”

“To ones not yet dead, ” he said.

“Then let them have their time of life, ” she said.

He sensed through the drug fog how right she was, pulled her against him with savage pressure. “Sihaya! ” he said.

She put a palm against his cheek, “I’m no longer afraid, Usul. Look at me. I see what you see when you hold me thus. ”

“What do you see? ” he demanded.

“I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It’s what we were meant to do. ”

The drug had him again and he thought: So many times you’ve given me comfort and forgetfulness. He felt anew the hyperillumination with its high-relief imagery of time, sensed his future becoming memories–the tender indignities of physical love, the sharing and communion of selves, the softness and the violence.

“You’re the strong one, Chani, ” he muttered. “Stay with me. ”

“Always, ” she said, and kissed his cheek.

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