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Book Three THE PROPHET 2 страницаHawat sat back, closed his eyes in thought. ”So that’s why they started looking into Arrakis, “ he said. ”Well, the thing’s done. “ He opened his eyes. ”They must have spies all over Arrakis by now. Two years! “ ”But certainly my innocent suggestion that –“ ”Nothing is innocent in an Emperor’s eyes! What were your instructions to Rabban? “ ”Merely that he should teach Arrakis to fear us. “ Hawat shook his head. ”You now have two alternatives, Baron. You can kill off the natives, wipe them out entirely, or –“ ”Waste an entire work force? “ ”Would you prefer to have the Emperor and those Great Houses he can still swing behind him come in here and perform a curettement, scrape out Giedi Prime like a hollow gourd? “ The Baron studied his Mentat, then: ”He wouldn’t dare! “ ”Wouldn’t he? “ The Baron’s lips quivered. ”What is your alternative? “ ”Abandon your dear nephew, Rabban. “ ”Aband. . . “ The Baron broke off, stared at Hawat. ”Send him no more troops, no aid of any kind. Don’t answer his messages other than to say you’ve heard of the terrible way he’s handled things on Arrakis and you intend to take corrective measures as soon as you’re able. I’ll arrange to have some of your messages intercepted by Imperial spies. “ ”But what of the spice, the revenues, the –“ ”Demand your baronial profits, but be careful how you make your demands. Require fixed sums of Rabban. We can –“ The Baron turned his hands palms up. ”But how can I be certain that my weasel nephew isn’t –“ ”We still have our spies on Arrakis. Tell Rabban he either meets the spice quotas you set him or he’ll be replaced. “ ”I know my nephew, “ the Baron said. ”This would only make him oppress the population even more. “ ”Of course he will! “ Hawat snapped. ”You don’t want that stopped now! You merely want your own hands clean. Let Rabban make your Salusa Secundus for you. There’s no need even to send him any prisoners. He has all the population required. If Rabban is driving his people to meet your spice quotas, then the Emperor need suspect no other motive. That’s reason enough for putting the planet on the rack. And you, Baron, will not show by word or action that there’s any other reason for this. “ The Baron could not keep the sly tone of admiration out of his voice. ”Ah, Hawat, you are a devious one. Now, how do we move into Arrakis and make use of what Rabban prepares? “ ”That’s the simplest thing of all, Baron. If you set each year’s quota a bit higher than the one before, matters will soon reach a head there. Production will drop off. You can remove Rabban and take over yourself. . . to correct the mess. “ ”It fits, “ the Baron said. ”But I can feel myself tiring of all this. I’m preparing another to take over Arrakis for me. “ Hawat studied the fat round face across from him. Slowly the old soldier-spy began to nod his head. ”Feyd-Rautha, “ he said. ”So that’s the reason for the oppression now. You’re very devious yourself, Baron. Perhaps we can incorporate these two schemes. Yes. Your Feyd-Rautha can go to Arrakis as their savior. He can win the populace. Yes. ” The Baron smiled. And behind his smile, he asked himself: Now, how does this fit in with Hawat’s personal scheming? And Hawat, seeing that he was dismissed, arose and left the red-walled room. As he walked, he could not put down the disturbing unknowns that cropped into every computation about Arrakis. This new religious leader that Gurney Halleck hinted at from his hiding place among the smugglers, this Muad’Dib. Perhaps I should not have told the Baron to let this religion flourish where it will, even among the folk of pan and graben, he told himself. But it’s well known that repression makes a religion flourish. And he thought about Halleck’s reports on Fremen battle tactics. The tactics smacked of Halleck himself. . . and Idaho. . . and even of Hawat. Did Idaho survive? he asked himself. But this was a futile question. He did not yet ask himself if it was possible that Paul had survived. He knew the Baron was convinced that all Atreides were dead. The Bene Gesserit witch had been his weapon, the Baron admitted. And that could only mean an end to all — even to the woman’s own son. What a poisonous hate she must’ve had for the Atreides, he thought. Something like the hate I hold for this Baron. Will my blow be as final and complete as hers? = = = = = = There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace — those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death. -from “The Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan Paul-Muad’Dib remembered that there had been a meal heavy with spice essence. He clung to this memory because it was an anchor point and he could tell himself from this vantage that his immediate experience must be a dream. I am a theater of processes, he told himself. I am a prey to the imperfect vision, to the race consciousness and its terrible purpose. Yet, he could not escape the fear that he had somehow overrun himself, lost his position in time, so that past and future and present mingled without distinction. It was a kind of visual fatigue and it came, he knew, from the constant necessity of holding the prescient future as a kind of memory that was in itself a thing intrinsically of the past. Chani prepared the meal for me, he told himself. Yet Chani was deep in the south — in the cold country where the sun was hot – secreted in one of the new sietch strongholds, safe with their son, Leto II. Or, was that a thing yet to happen? No, he reassured himself, for Alia-the-Strange-One, his sister, had gone there with his mother and with Chani — a twenty-thumper trip into the south, riding a Reverend Mother’s palanquin fixed to the back of a wild maker. He shied away from thought of riding the giant worms, asking himself: Or is Alia yet to be born? I was on razzia, Paul recalled. We went raiding to recover the water of our dead in Arrakeen. And I found the remains of my father in the funeral pyre. I enshrined the skull of my father in a Fremen rock mound overlooking Harg Pass. Or was that a thing yet to be? My wounds are real, Paul told himself. My scars are real. The shrine of my father’s skull is real. Still in the dreamlike state, Paul remembered that Harah, Jamis’ wife, had intruded on him once to say there’d been a fight in the sietch corridor. That had been the interim sietch before the women and children had been sent into the deep south. Harah had stood there in the entrance to the inner chamber, the black wings of her hair tied back by water rings on a chain. She had held aside the chamber’s hangings and told him that Chani had just killed someone. This happened, Paul told himself. This was real, not born out of its time and subject to change. Paul remembered he had rushed out to find Chani standing beneath the yellow globes of the corridor, clad in a brilliant blue wraparound robe with hood thrown back, a flush of exertion on her elfin features. She had been sheathing her crysknife. A huddled group had been hurrying away down the corridor with a burden. And Paul remembered telling himself: You always know when they’re carrying a body. Chani’s water rings, worn openly in sietch on a cord around her neck, tinkled as she turned toward him. “Chani, what is this? ” he asked. “I dispatched one who came to challenge you in single combat, Usul. ” “You killed him? ” “Yes. But perhaps I should’ve left him for Harah. ” (And Paul recalled how the faces of the people around them had showed appreciation for these words. Even Harah had laughed. ) “But he came to challenge me! ” “You trained me yourself in the weirding way, Usul. ” “Certainly! But you shouldn’t –” “I was born in the desert, Usul. I know how to use a crysknife. ” He suppressed his anger, tried to talk reasonably. “This may all be true, Chani, but –” “I am no longer a child hunting scorpions in the sietch by the light of a handglobe, Usul. I do not play games. ” Paul glared at her, caught by the odd ferocity beneath her casual attitude. “He was not worthy, Usul, ” Chani said. “I’d not disturb your meditations with the likes of him. ” She moved closer, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes, dropping her voice so that only he might hear. “And, beloved, when it’s learned that a challenger may face me and be brought to shameful death by Muad’Dib’s woman, there’ll be fewer challengers. ” Yes, Paul told himself, that had certainly happened. It was true-past. And the number of challengers testing the new blade of Muad’Dib did drop dramatically. Somewhere, in a world not-of-the-dream, there was a hint of motion, the cry of a nightbird. I dream, Paul reassured himself. It’s the spice meal. Still, there was about him a feeling of abandonment. He wondered it if might be possible that his ruh-spirit had slipped over somehow into the world where the Fremen believed he had his true existence — into the alam al-mithal, the world of similitudes, that metaphysical realm where all physical limitations were removed. And he knew fear at the thought of such a place, because removal of all limitations meant removal of all points of reference. In the landscape of a myth he could not orient himself and say: “I am I because I am here. ” His mother had said once: “The people are divided, some of them, in how they think of you. ” I must be waking from the dream, Paul told himself. For this had happened — these words from his mother, the Lady Jessica who was now a Reverend Mother of the Fremen, these words had passed through reality. Jessica was fearful of the religious relationship between himself and the Fremen, Paul knew. She didn’t like the fact that people of both sietch and graben referred to Muad’Dib as Him. And she went questioning among the tribes, sending out her Sayyadina spies, collecting their answers and brooding on them. She had quoted a Bene Gesserit proverb to him: “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement become headlong — faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late. ” Paul recalled that he had sat there in his mother’s quarters, in the inner chamber shrouded by dark hangings with their surfaces covered by woven patterns out of Fremen mythology. He had sat there, hearing her out, noting the way she was always observing — even when her eyes were lowered. Her oval face had new lines in it at the corners of the mouth, but the hair was still like polished bronze. The wide-set green eyes, though, hid beneath their over-casting of spice-imbued blue. “The Fremen have a simple, practical religion, ” he said. “Nothing about religion is simple, ” she warned. But Paul, seeing the clouded future that still hung over them, found himself swayed by anger. He could only say: “Religion unifies our forces. It’s our mystique. ” “You deliberately cultivate this air, this bravura, ” she charged. “You never cease indoctrinating. ” “Thus you yourself taught me, ” he said. But she had been full of contentions and arguments that day. It had been the day of the circumcision ceremony for little Leto. Paul had understood some of the reasons for her upset. She had never accepted his liaison — the “marriage of youth” — with Chani. But Chani had produced an Atreides son, and Jessica had found herself unable to reject the child with the mother. Jessica had stirred finally under his stare, said: “You think me an unnatural mother. ” “Of course not. ” “I see the way you watch me when I’m with your sister. You don’t understand about your sister. ” “I know why Alia is different, ” he said. “She was unborn, part of you, when you changed the Water of Life. She –” “You know nothing of it! ” And Paul, suddenly unable to express the knowledge gained out of its time, said only: “I don’t think you unnatural. ” She saw his distress, said: “There is a thing, Son. ” “Yes? ” “I do love your Chani. I accept her. ” This was real, Paul told himself. This wasn’t the imperfect vision to be changed by the twistings out of time’s own birth. The reassurance gave him a new hold on his world. Bits of solid reality began to dip through the dream state into his awareness. He knew suddenly that he was in a hiereg, a desert camp. Chani had planted their stilltent on flour- sand for its softness. That could only mean Chani was near by — Chani, his soul, Chani his Sihaya, sweet as the desert spring, Chani up from the palmaries of the deep south. Now, he remembered her singing a sand chanty to him in the time for sleep. “O my soul, Have no taste for Paradise this night, And I swear by Shai-hulud You will go there, Obedient to my love. ” And she had sung the walking song lovers shared on the sand, its rhythm like the drag of the dunes against the feet: “Tell me of thine eyes And I will tell thee of thy heart. Tell me of thy feet And I will tell thee of thy hands. Tell me of thy sleeping And I will tell thee of thy waking. Tell me of thy desires And I will tell thee of thy need. ” He had heard someone strumming a baliset in another tent. And he’d thought then of Gurney Halleck. Reminded by the familiar instrument, he had thought of Gurney whose face he had seen in a smuggler band, but who had not seen him, could not see him or know of him lest that inadvertently lead the Harkonnens to the son of the Duke they had killed. But the style of the player in the night, the distinctiveness of the fingers on the baliset’s strings, brought the real musician back to Paul’s memory. It had been Chatt the Leaper, captain of the Fedaykin, leader of the death commandos who guarded Muad’Dib. We are in the desert, Paul remembered. We are in the central erg beyond the Harkonnen patrols. I am here to walk the sand, to lure a maker and mount him by my own cunning that I may be a Fremen entire. He felt now the maula pistol at his belt, the crysknife. He felt the silence surrounding him. It was that special pre-morning silence when the nightbirds had gone and the day creatures had not yet signaled their alertness to their enemy, the sun. “You must ride the sand in the light of day that Shai-hulud shall see and know you have no fear, ” Stilgar had said. “Thus we turn our time around and set ourselves to sleep this night. ” Quietly, Paul sat up, feeling the looseness of a slacked stillsuit around his body, the shadowed stilltent beyond. So softly he moved, yet Chani heard him. She spoke from the tent’s gloom, another shadow there: “It’s not yet full light, beloved. ” “Sihaya, ” he said, speaking with half a laugh in his voice. “You call me your desert spring, ” she said, “but this day I’m thy goad. I am the Sayyadina who watches that the rites be obeyed. ” He began tightening his stillsuit. “You told me once the words of the Kitab al-Ibar, ” he said. “You told me: ‘Woman is thy field; go then to thy field and till it. ’ ” “I am the mother of thy firstborn, ” she agreed. He saw her in the grayness matching him movement for movement, securing her stillsuit for the open desert. “You should get all the rest you can, ” she said. He recognized her love for him speaking then and chided her gently: “The Sayyadina of the Watch does not caution or warn the candidate. ” She slid across to his side, touched his cheek with her palm. “Today, I am both the watcher and the woman. ” “You should’ve left this duty to another, ” he said. “Waiting is bad enough at best, ” she said. “I’d sooner be at thy side. ” He kissed her palm before securing the faceflap of his suit, then turned and cracked the seal of the tent. The air that came in to them held the chill not- quite-dryness that would precipitate trace dew in the dawn. With it came the smell of a pre-spice mass, the mass they had detected off to the northeast, and that told them there would be a maker near by. Paul crawled through the sphincter opening, stood on the sand and stretched the sleep from his muscles. A faint green-pearl luminescence etched the eastern horizon. The tents of his troop were small false dunes around him in the gloom. He saw movement off to the left — the guard, and knew they had seen him. They knew the peril he faced this day. Each Fremen had faced it. They gave him this last few moments of isolation now that he might prepare himself. It must be done today, he told himself. He thought of the power he wielded in the face of the pogrom — the old men who sent their sons to him to be trained in the weirding way of battle, the old men who listened to him now in council and followed his plans, the men who returned to pay him that highest Fremen compliment: “Your plan worked, Muad’Dib. ” Yet the meanest and smallest of the Fremen warriors could do a thing that he had never done. And Paul knew his leadership suffered from the omnipresent knowledge of this difference between them. He had not ridden the maker. Oh, he’d gone up with the others for training trips and raids, but he had not made his own voyage. Until he did, his world was bounded by the abilities of others. No true Fremen could permit this. Until he did this thing himself, even the great southlands — the area some twenty thumpers beyond the erg — were denied him unless he ordered a palanquin and rode like a Reverend Mother or one of the sick and wounded. Memory returned to him of his wrestling with his inner awareness during the night. He saw a strange parallel here — if he mastered the maker, his rule was strengthened; if he mastered the inward eye, this carried its own measure of command. But beyond them both lay the clouded area, the Great Unrest where all the universe seemed embroiled. The differences in the ways he comprehended the universe haunted him — accuracy matched with inaccuracy. He saw it in situ. Yet, when it was born, when it came into the pressures of reality, the now had its own life and grew with its own subtle differences. Terrible purpose remained. Race consciousness remained. And over all loomed the jihad, bloody and wild. Chani joined him outside the tent, hugging her elbows, looking up at him from the corners of her eyes the way she did when she studied his mood. “Tell me again about the waters of thy birthworld, Usul, ” she said. He saw that she was trying to distract him, ease his mind of tensions before the deadly test. It was growing lighter, and he noted that some of his Fedaykin were already striking their tents. “I’d rather you told me about the sietch and about our son, ” he said. “Does our Leto yet hold my mother in his palm? ” “It’s Alia he holds as well, ” she said. “And he grows rapidly. He’ll be a big man. ” “What’s it like in the south? ” he asked. “When you ride the maker you’ll see for yourself, ” she said. “But I wish to see it first through your eyes. ” “It’s powerfully lonely, ” she said. He touched the nezhoni scarf at her forehead where it protruded from her stillsuit cap. “Why will you not talk about the sietch? ” “I have talked about it. The sietch is a lonely place without our men. It’s a place of work. We labor in the factories and the potting rooms. There are weapons to be made, poles to plant that we may forecast the weather, spice to collect for the bribes. There are dunes to be planted to make them grow and to anchor them. There are fabrics and rugs to make, fuel cells to charge. There are children to train that the tribe’s strength may never be lost. ” “Is nothing then pleasant in the sietch? ” he asked. “The children are pleasant. We observe the rites. We have sufficient food. Sometimes one of us may come north to be with her man. Life must go on. ” “My sister, Alia — is she accepted yet by the people? ” Chani turned toward him in the growing dawnlight. Her eyes bored into him. “It’s a thing to be discussed another time, beloved. ” “Let us discuss it now. ” “You should conserve your energies for the test, ” she said. He saw that he had touched something sensitive, hearing the withdrawal in her voice. “The unknown brings its own worries, ” he said. Presently she nodded, said, “There is yet. . . misunderstanding because of Alia’s strangeness. The women are fearful because a child little more than an infant talks. . . of things that only an adult should know. They do not understand the. . . change in the womb that made Alia. . . different. ” “There is trouble? ” he asked. And he thought: I’ve seen visions of trouble over Alia. Chani looked toward the growing line of the sunrise. “Some of the women banded to appeal to the Reverend Mother. They demanded she exorcise the demon in her daughter. They quoted the scripture: ‘Suffer not a witch to live among us. ’ ” “And what did my mother say to them? ” “She recited the law and sent the women away abashed. She said: ‘If Alia incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not foreseeing and preventing the trouble. ’ And she tried to explain how the change had worked on Alia in the womb. But the women were angry because they had been embarrassed. They went away muttering. ” There will be trouble because of Alia, he thought. A crystal blowing of sand touched the exposed portions of his face, bringing the scent of the pre-spice mass. “El Sayal, the rain of sand that brings the morning, ” he said. He looked out across the gray light of the desert landscape, the landscape beyond pity, the sand that was form absorbed in itself. Dry lightning streaked a dark corner to the south — sign that a storm had built up its static charge there. The roll of thunder boomed long after. “The voice that beautifies the land, ” Chani said. More of his men were stirring out of their tents. Guards were coming in from the rims. Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders. “Give as few orders as possible, ” his father had told him. . . once. . . long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject. ” The Fremen knew this rule instinctively. The troop’s watermaster began the morning chanty, adding to it now the call for the rite to initiate a sandrider. “The world is a carcass, ” the man chanted, his voice wailing across the dunes. “Who can turn away the Angel of Death? What Shai-hulud has decreed must be. ” Paul listened, recognizing that these were the words that also began the death chant of his Fedaykin, the words the death commandos recited as they buried themselves into battle. Will there be a rock shrine here this day to mark the passing of another soul? Paul asked himself. Will Fremen stop here in the future, each to add another stone and think on Muad’Dib who died in this place? He knew this was among the alternatives today, a fact along lines of the future radiating from this position in time-space. The imperfect vision plagued him. The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of the jihad, the greater the turmoil that wove through his prescience. His entire future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm — the violent nexus beyond which all was fog and clouds. “Stilgar approaches, ” Chani said. “I must stand apart now, beloved. Now, I must be Sayyadina and observe the rite that it may be reported truly in the Chronicles. ” She looked up at him and, for a moment, her reserve slipped, then she had herself under control. “When this is past, I shall prepare thy breakfast with my own hands, ” she said. She turned away. Stilgar moved toward him across the flour sand, stirring up little dust puddles. The dark niches of his eyes remained steady on Paul with their untamed stare. The glimpse of black beard above the stillsuit mask, the lines of craggy cheeks, could have been wind-etched from the native rock for all their movement. The man carried Paul’s banner on its staff — the green and black banner with a water tube in the staff — that already was a legend in the land. Half pridefully, Paul thought: I cannot do the simplest thing without its becoming a legend. They will mark how I parted from Chani, how I greet Stilgar — every move I make this day. Live or die, it is a legend. I must not die. Then it will be only legend and nothing to stop the jihad. Stilgar planted the staff in the sand beside Paul, dropped his hands to his sides. The blue-within-blue eyes remained level and intent. And Paul thought how his own eyes already were assuming this mask of color from the spice. “They denied us the Hajj, ” Stilgar said with ritual solemnity. As Chani had taught him, Paul responded: “Who can deny a Fremen the right to walk or ride where he wills? ” “I am a Naib, ” Stilgar said, “never to be taken alive. I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes. ” Silence settled over them. Paul glanced at the other Fremen scattered over the sand beyond Stilgar, the way they stood without moving for this moment of personal prayer. And he thought of how the Fremen were a people whose living consisted of killing, an entire people who had lived with rage and grief all of their days, never once considering what might take the place of either — except for a dream with which Liet-Kynes had infused them before his death. “Where is the Lord who led us through the land of desert and of pits? ” Stilgar asked. “He is ever with us, ” the Fremen chanted. Stilgar squared his shoulders, stepped closer to Paul and lowered his voice. “Now, remember what I told you. Do it simply and directly — nothing fancy. Among our people, we ride the maker at the age of twelve. You are more than six years beyond that age and not born to this life. You don’t have to impress anyone with your courage. We know you are brave. All you must do is call the maker and ride him. ” “I will remember, ” Paul said. “See that you do. I’ll not have you shame my teaching. ” Stilgar pulled a plastic rod about a meter long from beneath his robe. The thing was pointed at one end, had a spring-wound clapper at the other end. “I prepared this thumper myself. It’s a good one. Take it. ” Paul felt the warm smoothness of the plastic as he accepted the thumper. “Shishakli has your hooks, ” Stilgar said. “He’ll hand them to you as you step out onto that dune over there. ” He pointed to his right. “Call a big maker, Usul. Show us the way. ” Paul marked the tone of Stilgar’s voice — half ritual and half that of a worried friend. In that instant, the sun seemed to bound above the horizon. The sky took on the silvered gray-blue that warned this would be a day of extreme heat and dryness even for Arrakis. “It is the time of the scalding day, ” Stilgar said, and now his voice was entirely ritual. “Go, Usul, and ride the maker, travel the sand as a leader of men. ” Paul saluted his banner, noting how the green and black flag hung limply now that the dawn wind had died. He turned toward the dune Stilgar had indicated — a dirty tan slope with an S-track crest. Already, most of the troop was moving out in the opposite direction, climbing the other dune that had sheltered their camp. One robed figure remained in Paul’s path: Shishakli, a squad leader of the Fedaykin, only his slope-lidded eyes visible between stillsuit cap and mask. Shishakli presented two thin, whiplike shafts as Paul approached. The shafts were about a meter and a half long with glistening plasteel hoods at one end, roughened at the other end for a firm grip. Paul accepted them both in his left hand as required by the ritual. “They are my own hooks, ” Shishakli said in a husky voice. “They never have failed. ” Paul nodded, maintaining the necessary silence, moved past the man and up the dune slope. At the crest, he glanced back, saw the troop scattering like a flight of insects, their robes fluttering. He stood alone now on the sandy ridge with only the horizon in front of him, the flat and unmoving horizon. This was a good dune Stilgar had chosen, higher than its companions for the viewpoint vantage. Stooping, Paul planted the thumper deep into the windward face where the sand was compacted and would give maximum transmission to the drumming. Then he hesitated, reviewing the lessons, reviewing the life-and-death necessities that faced him. When he threw the latch, the thumper would begin its summons. Across the sand, a giant worm — a maker — would hear and come to the drumming. With the whiplike hook-staffs, Paul knew, he could mount the maker’s high curving back. For as long as a forward edge of a worm’s ring segment was held open by a hook, open to admit abrasive sand into the more sensitive interior, the creature would not retreat beneath the desert. It would, in fact, roll its gigantic body to bring the opened segment as far away from the desert surface as possible.
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