Dune (5 page)

“You think I could be this Kwisatz Haderach,” he said. “You talk about me,
but you haven’t said one thing about what we can do to help my father. I’ve
heard you talking to my mother. You talk as though my father were dead. Well, he
isn’t!”

“If there were a thing to be done for him, we’d have done it,” the old woman
growled. “We may be able to salvage you. Doubtful, but possible. But for your
father, nothing. When you’ve learned to accept that as a fact, you’ve learned a
real Bene Gesserit lesson.”

Paul saw how the words shook his mother. He glared at the old woman. How
could she say such a thing about his father? What made her so sure? His mind
seethed with resentment.

The Reverend Mother looked at Jessica. “You’ve been training him in the Way
– I’ve seen the signs of it. I’d have done the same in your shoes and devil
take the Rules.”

Jessica nodded.

“Now, I caution you,” said the old woman, “to ignore the regular order of
training. His own safety requires the Voice. He already has a good start in it,
but we both know how much more he needs . . . and that desperately.” She stepped
close to Paul, stared down at him. “Goodbye, young human. I hope you make it.
But if you don’t — well, we shall yet succeed.”

Once more she looked at Jessica. A flicker sign of understanding passed
between them. Then the old woman swept from the room, her robes hissing, with
not another backward glance. The room and its occupants already were shut from
her thoughts.

But Jessica had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother’s face as she
turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more
unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day.

= = = = = =

You have read that Muad’Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The dangers
were too great. But Muad’Dib did have wonderful companion-?teachers. There was
Gurney Halleck, the troubadour-?warrior. You will sing some of Gurney’s songs, as
you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old Mentat Master of
Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah Emperor. There
were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name
black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son
in the Bene Gesserit Way, and — of course — the Duke Leto, whose qualities as
a father have long been overlooked.
-from “A Child’s History of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

Thufir Hawat slipped into the training room of Castle Caladan, closed the
door softly. He stood there a moment, feeling old and tired and storm-?leathered.
His left leg ached where it had been slashed once in the service of the Old
Duke.

Three generations of them now, he thought.

He stared across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through
the skylights, saw the boy seated with back to the door, intent on papers and
charts spread across an ell table.

How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to
a door? Hawat cleared his throat.

Paul remained bent over his studies.

A cloud shadow passed over the skylights. Again, Hawat cleared his throat.

Paul straightened, spoke without turning: “I know. I’m sitting with my back
to a door.”

Hawat suppressed a smile, strode across the room.

Paul looked up at the grizzled old man who stopped at a corner of the table.
Hawat’s eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.

“I heard you coming down the hall,” Paul said. “And I heard you open the
door.”

“The sounds I make could be imitated.”

“I’d know the difference.”

He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-?mother of his is giving him the
deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that?
Maybe that’s why they sent the old Proctor here — to whip our dear Lady Jessica
into line.

Hawat pulled up a chair across from Paul, sat down facing the door. He did
it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck him as an odd place
suddenly, a stranger-?place with most of its hardware already gone off to
Arrakis. A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms
quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an
ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.

There stand I, Hawat thought.

“Thufir, what’re you thinking?” Paul asked.

Hawat looked at the boy. “I was thinking we’ll all be out of here soon and
likely never see the place again.”

“Does that make you sad?”

“Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”
He glanced at the charts on the table. “And Arrakis is just another place.”

“Did my father send you up to test me?”

Hawat scowled — the boy had such observing ways about him. He nodded.
“You’re thinking it’d have been nicer if he’d come up himself, but you must know
how busy he is. He’ll be along later.”

“I’ve been studying about the storms on Arrakis.”

“The storms. I see.”

“They sound pretty bad.”

“That’s too cautious a word: bad. Those storms build up across six or seven
thousand kilometers of flatlands, feed on anything that can give them a push —
coriolis force, other storms, anything that has an ounce of energy in it. They
can blow up to seven hundred kilometers an hour, loaded with everything loose
that’s in their way — sand, dust, everything. They can eat flesh off bones and
etch the bones to slivers.”

“Why don’t they have weather control?”
“Arrakis has special problems, costs are higher, and there’d be maintenance
and the like. The Guild wants a dreadful high price for satellite control and
your father’s House isn’t one of the big rich ones, lad. You know that.”

“Have you ever seen the Fremen?”

The lad’s mind is darting all over today, Hawat thought.

“Like as not I have seen them,” he said. “There’s little to tell them from
the folk of the graben and sink. They all wear those great flowing robes. And
they stink to heaven in any closed space. It’s from those suits they wear —
call them ’stillsuits’ — that reclaim the body’s own water.”

Paul swallowed, suddenly aware of the moisture in his mouth, remembering a
dream of thirst. That people could want so for water they had to recycle their
body moisture struck him with a feeling of desolation. “Water’s precious there,”
he said.

Hawat nodded, thinking: Perhaps I’m doing it, getting across to him the
importance of this planet as an enemy. It’s madness to go in there without that
caution in our minds.

Paul looked up at the skylight, aware that it had begun to rain. He saw the
spreading wetness on the gray meta-?glass. “Water,” he said.

“You’ll learn a great concern for water,” Hawat said. “As the Duke’s son
you’ll never want for it, but you’ll see the pressures of thirst all around
you.”

Paul wet his lips with his tongue, thinking back to the day a week ago and
the ordeal with the Reverend Mother. She, too, had said something about water
starvation.

“You’ll learn about the funeral plains,” she’d said, “about the wilderness
that is empty, the wasteland where nothing lives except the spice and the
sandworms. You’ll stain your eyepits to reduce the sun glare. Shelter will mean
a hollow out of the wind and hidden from view. You’ll ride upon your own two
feet without ‘thopter or groundcar or mount.”

And Paul had been caught more by her tone — singsong and wavering — than
by her words.

“When you live upon Arrakis,” she had said, “khala, the land is empty. The
moons will be your friends, the sun your enemy.”

Paul had sensed his mother come up beside him away from her post guarding
the door. She had looked at the Reverend Mother and asked: “Do you see no hope.
Your Reverence?”

“Not for the father.” And the old woman had waved Jessica to silence, looked
down at Paul. “Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four
things . . . ” She held up four big-?knuckled fingers. “. . . the learning of the
wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of
the brave. But all of these are as nothing . . . ” She closed her fingers into a
fist. “. . . without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science
of your tradition!”

A week had passed since that day with the Reverend Mother. Her words were
only now beginning to come into full register. Now, sitting in the training room
with Thufir Hawat, Paul felt a sharp pang of fear. He looked across at the
Mentat’s puzzled frown.

“Where were you woolgathering that time?” Hawat asked.

“Did you meet the Reverend Mother?”

“That Truthsayer witch from the Imperium?” Hawat’s eyes quickened with
interest. “I met her.”

“She . . . ” Paul hesitated, found that he couldn’t tell Hawat about the
ordeal. The inhibitions went deep.

“Yes? What did she?”

Paul took two deep breaths. “She said a thing.” He closed his eyes, calling
up the words, and when he spoke his voice unconsciously took on some of the old
woman’s tone: ” ‘You, Paul Atreides, descendant of kings, son of a Duke, you
must learn to rule. It’s something none of your ancestors learned.’ “ Paul
opened his eyes, said: ”That made me angry and I said my father rules an entire
planet. And she said, ‘He’s losing it.’ And I said my father was getting a
richer planet. And she said. ‘He’ll lose that one, too.’ And I wanted to run and
warn my father, but she said he’d already been warned — by you, by Mother, by
many people.“

”True enough,“ Hawat muttered.

”Then why’re we going?“ Paul demanded.

”Because the Emperor ordered it. And because there’s hope in spite of what
that witch-?spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?“

Paul looked down at his right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table.
Slowly, he willed the muscles to relax. She put some kind of hold on me, he
thought. How?

”She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,“ Paul said. ”And I said that
one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do.“

She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to
continue.

”She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must
lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.“

”How’d she figure your father attracted men like Duncan and Gurney?“ Hawat
asked.

Paul shrugged. ”Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s
language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they
didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she
meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear
just with your ears. And I said that’s what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life.“

Hawat chuckled. ”How’d that sit with her?“

”I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve,
but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A
process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the
flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy
her.“

He seems to be getting over it, Hawat thought, but that old witch frightened
him. Why did she do it?

”Thufir,“ Paul said, ”will Arrakis be as bad as she said?“

”Nothing could be that bad,“ Hawat said and forced a smile. ”Take those
Fremen, for example, the renegade people of the desert. By first-?approximation
analysis, I can tell you there’re many, many more of them than the Imperium
suspects. People live there, lad: a great many people, and . . .“ Hawat put a
sinewy finger beside his eye. ”. . . they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion.
You must not breathe a word of this, lad. I tell you only as your father’s
helper.“

”My father has told me of Salusa Secundus,“ Paul said. ”Do you know, Thufir,
it sounds much like Arrakis . . . perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it.“

”We do not really know of Salusa Secundus today,“ Hawat said. ”Only what it
was like long ago . . . mostly. But what is known — you’re right on that
score.“

”Will the Fremen help us?“

”It’s a possibility.“ Hawat stood up. ”I leave today for Arrakis. Meanwhile,
you take care of yourself for an old man who’s fond of you, heh? Come around
here like the good lad and sit facing the door. It’s not that I think there’s
any danger in the castle; it’s just a habit I want you to form.“

Paul got to his feet, moved around the table. ”You’re going today?“

”Today it is, and you’ll be following tomorrow. Next time we meet it’ll be
on the soil of your new world.“ He gripped Paul’s right arm at the bicep. ”Keep
your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge.” He released the arm,
patted Paul’s shoulder, whirled and strode quickly to the door.
“Thufir! ”Paul called.

Hawat turned, standing in the open doorway.

“Don’t sit with your back to any doors,” Paul said.

A grin spread across the seamed old face. “That I won’t, lad. Depend on it.”
And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.

Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day
here, he thought. He looked around the room. We ‘re leaving. The idea of
departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He
recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of
many things — the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides,
the suns — the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense
of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?

The door across from Paul banged open and an ugly lump of a man lurched
through it preceded by a handful of weapons.

“Well, Gurney Halleck,” Paul called, “are you the new weapons master?”

Halleck kicked the door shut with one heel. “You’d rather I came to play
games, I know,” he said. He glanced abound the room, noting that Hawat’s men
already had been over it, checking, making it safe for a duke’s heir. The subtle
code signs were all around.