Dune (63 page)

“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.

I am a sandrider, Paul told himself.

He glanced down at the hooks in his left hand, thinking that he had only to
shift those hooks down the curve of a maker’s immense side to make the creature
roll and turn, guiding it where he willed. He had seen it done. He had been
helped up the side of a worm for a short ride in training. The captive worm
could be ridden until it lay exhausted and quiescent upon the desert surface and
a new maker must be summoned.

Once he was past this test, Paul knew, he was qualified to make the twenty-
thumper journey into the southland — to rest and restore himself — into the
south where the women and the families had been hidden from the pogrom among the
new palmaries and sietch warrens.

He lifted his head and looked to the south, reminding himself that the maker
summoned wild from the erg was an unknown quantity, and the one who summoned it
was equally unknown to this test.

“You must gauge the approaching maker carefully,” Stilgar had explained.
“You must stand close enough that you can mount it as it passes, yet not so
close that it engulfs you.”

With abrupt decision, Paul released the thumper’s latch. The clapper began
revolving and the summons drummed through the sand, a measured “lump . . . lump
. . . lump . . . ”

He straightened, scanning the horizon, remembering Stilgar’s words: “Judge
the line of approach carefully. Remember, a worm seldom makes an unseen approach
to a thumper. Listen all the same. You may often hear it before you see it.”

And Chani’s words of caution, whispered at night when her fear for him
overcame her, filled his mind: “When you take your stand along the maker’s path,
you must remain utterly still. You must think like a patch of sand. Hide beneath
your cloak and become a little dune in your very essence.”
Slowly, he scanned the horizon, listening, watching for the signs he had
been taught.

It came from the southeast, a distant hissing, a sand-?whisper. Presently he
saw the faraway outline of the creature’s track against the dawnlight and
realized he had never before seen a maker this large, never heard of one this
size. It appeared to be more than half a league long, and the rise of the
sandwave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain.

This is nothing I have seen by vision or in life, Paul cautioned himself. He
hurried across the path of the thing to take his stand, caught up entirely by
the rushing needs of this moment.

= = = = = =

“Control the coinage and the courts — let the rabble have the rest.” Thus the
Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: “If you want profits, you must
rule.” There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: “Who are the rabble and
who are the ruled?”
-Muad’Dib’s Secret Message to the Landsraad from “Arrakis Awakening” by the
Princess Irulan

A thought came unbidden to Jessica’s mind: Paul will be undergoing his
sandrider test at any moment now. They try to conceal this fact from me, but
it’s obvious.

And Chani has gone on some mysterious errand.

Jessica sat in her resting chamber, catching a moment of quiet between the
night’s classes. It was a pleasant chamber, but not as large as the one she had
enjoyed in Sietch Tabr before their flight from the pogrom. Still, this place
had thick rugs on the floor, soft cushions, a low coffee table near at hand,
multicolored hangings on the walls, and soft yellow glowglobes overhead. The
room was permeated with the distinctive acrid furry odor of a Fremen sietch that
she had come to associate with a sense of security.

Yet she knew she would never overcome a feeling of being in an alien place.
It was the harshness that the rugs and hangings attempted to conceal.

A faint tinkling-?drumming-?slapping penetrated to the resting chamber.
Jessica knew it for a birth celebration, probably Subiay’s. Her time was near.
And Jessica knew she’d see the baby soon enough — a blue-?eyed cherub brought to
the Reverend Mother for blessing. She knew also that her daughter, Alia, would
be at the celebration and would report on it.

It was not yet time for the nightly prayer of parting. They wouldn’t have
started a birth celebration near the time of ceremony that mourned the slave
raids of Poritrin, Bela Tegeuse, Rossak, and Harmonthep.

Jessica sighed. She knew she was trying to keep her thoughts off her son and
the dangers he faced — the pit traps with their poisoned barbs, the Harkonnen
raids (although these were growing fewer as the Fremen took their toll of
aircraft and raiders with the new weapons Paul had given them), and the natural
dangers of the desert — makers and thirst and dust chasms.