Dune (62 page)

“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—low 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—ail 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.

 

THE BARON Vladimir Harkonnen raged down the corridor from his private apartments, flitting through patches of late afternoon sunlight that poured down from high windows. He bobbed and twisted in his suspensors with violent movements.

Past the private kitchen he stormed—past the library, past the small reception room and into the servants' antechamber where the evening relaxation already had set in.

The guard captain, Iakin Nefud, squatted on a divan across the chamber, the stupor of semuta dullness in his flat face, the eerie wailing of semuta music around him. His own court sat near to do his bidding.

“Nefud!” the Baron roared.

Men scrambled.

Nefud stood, his face composed by the narcotic but with an overlay of paleness that told of his fear. The semuta music had stopped.

“My Lord Baron,” Nefud said. Only the drug kept the trembling out of his voice.

The Baron scanned the faces around him, seeing the looks of frantic quiet in them. He returned his attention to Nefud, and spoke in a silken tone:

“How long have you been my guard captain, Nefud?”

Nefud swallowed. “Since Arrakis, my Lord. Almost two years.”

“And have you always anticipated dangers to my person?”

“Such has been my only desire, my Lord.”

“Then where is Feyd-Rautha?” the Baron roared.

Nefud recoiled. “M'Lord?”

“You do not consider Feyd-Rautha a danger to my person?” Again, the voice was silken.

Nefud wet his lips with his tongue. Some of the semuta dullness left his eyes. “Feyd-Rautha's in the slave quarters, my Lord.”

“With the women again, eh?” The Baron trembled with the effort of suppressing anger.

“Sire, it could be he's—”

“Silence!”

The Baron advanced another step into the antechamber, noting how the men moved back, clearing a subtle space around Nefud, dissociating themselves from the object of wrath.

“Did I not command you to know precisely where the na-Baron was at all times?” the Baron asked. He moved a step closer. “Did I not say to you that you were to know
precisely
what the na-Baron was saying at all times—and to whom?” Another step. “Did I not say to you that you were to tell me whenever he went into the quarters of the slave women?”

Nefud swallowed. Perspiration stood out on his forehead.

The Baron held his voice flat, almost devoid of emphasis: “Did I not say these things to you?”

Nefud nodded.

“And did I not say to that you were to check all slave boys sent to me and that you were to do this yourself...
personally?”

Again, Nefud nodded.

“Did you, perchance, not see the blemish on the thigh of the one sent me this evening?” the Baron asked. “Is it possible you—”

“Uncle.”

The Baron whirled, stared at Feyd-Rautha standing in the doorway. The presence of his nephew here, now—the look of hurry that the young man could not quite conceal—all revealed much. Feyd-Rautha had his own spy system focused on the Baron.

“There is a body in my chambers that I wish removed,” the Baron said, and he kept his hand at the projectile weapon beneath his robes, thankful that his shield was the best.

Feyd-Rautha glanced at two guardsmen against the right wall, nodded. The two detached themselves, scurried out the door and down the hall toward the Baron's apartments.

Those two, eh?
the Baron thought.
Ah, this young monster has much to learn yet about conspiracy!

“I presume you left matters peaceful in the slave quarters, Feyd,” the Baron said.

“I've been playing cheops with the slavemaster,” Feyd-Rautha said, and he thought:
What has gone wrong? The boy we sent to my uncle has obviously been killed. But he was perfect for the job. Even Hawat couldn't have made a better choice. The boy was perfect!

“Playing pyramid chess,” the Baron said. “How nice. Did you win?”

“I ... ah, yes, Uncle.” And Feyd-Rautha strove to contain his disquiet.

The Baron snapped his fingers. “Nefud, you wish to be restored to my good graces?”

“Sire, what have I done?” Nefud quavered.

“That's unimportant now,” the Baron said. “Feyd has beaten the slavemaster at cheops. Did you hear that?”

“Yes ... Sire.”

“I wish you to take three men and go to the slavemaster,” the Baron said. “Garrote the slavemaster. Bring his body to me when you've finished that I may see it was done properly. We cannot have such inept chess players in our employ.”

Feyd-Rautha went pale, took a step forward. “But, Uncle, I—”

“Later, Feyd,” the Baron said, and waved a hand. “Later.”

The two guards who had gone to the Baron's quarters for the slave boy's body staggered past the antechamber door with their load sagging between them, arms trailing. The Baron watched until they were out of sight.

Nefud stepped up beside the Baron. “You wish me to kill the slavemaster, now, my Lord?”

“Now,” the Baron said. “And when you've finished, add those two who just passed to your list. I don't like the way they carried that body. One should do such things neatly. I'll wish to see their carcasses, too.”

Nefud said, “My Lord, is it anything that I've—”

“Do as your master has ordered,” Feyd-Rautha said. And he thought:
All I can hope for now is to save my own skin.

Good!
the Baron thought.
He yet knows how to cut his losses.
And the Baron smiled inwardly at himself, thinking:
The lad knows, too, what will please me and be most apt to stay my wrath from falling on him. He knows I must preserve him. Who else do I have who could take the reins I must leave someday? I have no other as capable. But he must learn! And I must preserve myself while he's learning.

Nefud signaled men to assist him, led them out the door.

“Would you accompany me to my chambers, Feyd?” the Baron asked.

“I am yours to command,” Feyd-Rautha said. He bowed, thinking:
I'm caught.

“After you,” the Baron said, and he gestured to the door.

Feyd-Rautha indicated his fear by only the barest hesitation.
Have I
failed utterly? he asked himself.
Will he slip a poisoned blade into my back... slowly, through the shield? Does he have an alternative successor ?

Let him experience this moment of terror,
the Baron thought as he walked along behind his nephew.
He will succeed me, but at a time of my choosing. I'll not have him throwing away what I've built!

Feyd-Rautha tried not to walk too swiftly. He felt the skin crawling on his back as though his body itself wondered when the blow could come. His muscles alternately tensed and relaxed.

“Have you heard the latest word from Arrakis?” the Baron asked.

“No, Uncle.”

Feyd-Rautha forced himself not to look back. He turned down the hall out of the servants' wing.

“They've a new prophet or religious leader of some kind among the Fremen,” the Baron said. “They call him Muad‘Dib. Very funny, really. It means ‘the Mouse.' I've told Rabban to let them have their religion. It'll keep them occupied.”

“That's very interesting, Uncle,” Feyd-Rautha said. He turned into the private corridor to his uncle's quarters, wondering: Why does he talk
about religion? Is it some subtle hint to me?

“Yes, isn't it?” the Baron said.

They came into the Baron's apartments through the reception salon to the bedchamber. Subtle signs of a struggle greeted them here—a suspensor lamp displaced, a bedcushion on the floor, a soother-reel spilled open across a bedstand.

“It was a clever plan,” the Baron said. He kept his body shield tuned to maximum, stopped, facing his nephew. “But not clever enough. Tell me, Feyd, why didn't you strike me down yourself? You've had opportunity enough.”

Feyd-Rautha found a suspensor chair, accomplished a mental shrug as he sat down in it without being asked.

I must be bold now,
he thought.

“You taught me that my own hands must remain clean,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” the Baron said. “When you face the Emperor, you must be able to say truthfully that you did not do the deed. The witch at the Emperor's elbow will hear your words and know their truth or falsehood. Yes. I warned you about that.”