Dune (79 page)

“Perhaps you have only pagan rites here,” Feyd-?Rautha said. “Would you like
the Emperor’s Truthsayer to prepare your spirit for its journey?”

Paul smiled, circling to the right, alert, his black thoughts suppressed by
the needs of the moment.

Feyd-?Rautha leaped, feinting with right hand, but with the knife shifted in
a blur to his left hand.

Paul dodged easily, noting the shield-?conditioned hesitation in Feyd-
Rautha’s thrust. Still, it was not as great a shield conditioning as some Paul
had seen, and he sensed that Feyd-?Rautha had fought before against unshielded
foes.

“Does an Atreides run or stand and fight?” Feyd-?Rautha asked.

Paul resumed his silent circling. Idaho’s words came back to him, the words
of training from the long-?ago practice floor on Caladan: “Use the first moments
in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the
moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.”

“Perhaps you think this dance prolongs your life a few moments,” Feyd-?Rautha
said. “Well and good.” He stopped the circling, straightened.
Paul had seen enough for a first approximation. Feyd-?Rautha led to the left
side, presenting the right hip as though the mailed fighting girdle could
protect his entire side. It was the action of a man trained to the shield and
with a knife in both hands.

Or . . . And Paul hesitated . . . the girdle was more than it seemed.

The Harkonnen appeared too confident against a man who’d this day led the
forces of victory against Sardaukar legions.

Feyd-?Rautha noted the hesitation, said: “Why prolong the inevitable? You but
keep me from exercising my rights over this ball of dirt.”

If it’s a flip-?dart, Paul thought, it’s a cunning one. The girdle shows no
signs of tampering.

“Why don’t you speak?” Feyd-?Rautha demanded.

Paul resumed his probing circle, allowing himself a cold smile at the tone
of unease in Feyd-?Rautha’s voice, evidence that the pressure of silence was
building.

“You smile, eh?” Feyd-?Rautha asked. And he leaped in mid-?sentence.

Expecting the slight hesitation, Paul almost failed to evade the downflash
of blade, felt its tip scratch his left arm. He silenced the sudden pain there,
his mind flooded with realization that the earlier hesitation had been a trick -
- an overfeint. Here was more of an opponent than he had expected. There would
be tricks within tricks within tricks.

“Your own Thufir Hawat taught me some of my skills,” Feyd-?Rautha said. “He
gave me first blood. Too bad the old fool didn’t live to see it.”

And Paul recalled that Idaho had once said, “Expect only what happens in the
fight. That way you’ll never be surprised.”

Again the two circled each other, crouched, cautious.

Paul saw the return of elation to his opponent, wondered at it. Did a
scratch signify that much to the man? Unless there were poison on the blade! But
how could there be? His own men had handled the weapon, snooped it before
passing it. They were too well trained to miss an obvious thing like that.

“That woman you were talking to over there,” Feyd-?Rautha said. “The little
one. Is she something special to you? A pet perhaps? Will she deserve my special
attentions?”

Paul remained silent, probing with his inner senses, examining the blood
from the wound, finding a trace of soporific from the Emperor’s blade. He
realigned his own metabolism to match this threat and change the molecules of
the soporific, but he felt a thrill of doubt. They’d been prepared with
soporific on a blade. A soporific. Nothing to alert a poison snooper, but strong
enough to slow the muscles it touched. His enemies had their own plans within
plans, their own stacked treacheries.

Again Feyd-?Rautha leaped, stabbing.

Paul, the smile frozen on his face, feinted with slowness as though
inhibited by the drug and at the last instant dodged to meet the downflashing
arm on the crysknife’s point.

Feyd-?Rautha ducked sideways and was out and away, his blade shifted to his
left hand, and the measure of him that only a slight paleness of jaw betrayed
the acid pain where Paul had cut him.

Let him know his own moment of doubt, Paul thought. Let him suspect poison.

“Treachery!” Feyd-?Rautha shouted. “He’s poisoned me! I do feel poison in my
arm!”

Paul dropped his cloak of silence, said: “Only a little acid to counter the
soporific on the Emperor’s blade.”

Feyd-?Rautha matched Paul’s cold smile, lifted blade in left hand for a mock
salute. His eyes glared rage behind the knife.

Paul shifted his crysknife to his left hand, matching his opponent. Again,
they circled, probing.
Feyd-?Rautha began closing the space between them, edging in, knife held
high, anger showing itself in squint of eye and set of jaw. He feinted right and
under, and they were pressed against each other, knife hands gripped, straining.

Paul, cautious of Feyd-?Rautha’s right hip where he suspected a poison flip-
dart, forced the turn to the right. He almost failed to see the needlepoint
flick out beneath the belt line. A shift and a giving in Feyd-?Rautha’s motion
warned him. The tiny point missed Paul’s flesh by the barest fraction.

On the left hip!

Treachery within treachery within treachery, Paul reminded himself. Using
Bene Gesserit-?trained muscles, he sagged to catch a reflex in Feyd-?Rautha, but
the necessity of avoiding the tiny point jutting from his opponent’s hip threw
Paul off just enough that he missed his footing and found himself thrown hard to
the floor, Feyd-?Rautha on top.

“You see it there on my hip?” Feyd-?Rautha whispered. “Your death, fool.” And
he began twisting himself around, forcing the poisoned needle closer and closer.
“It’ll stop your muscles and my knife will finish you. There’ll be never a trace
left to detect!”

Paul strained, hearing the silent screams in his mind, his cell-?stamped
ancestors demanding that he use the secret word to slow Feyd-?Rautha, to save
himself.

“I will not say it!” Paul gasped.

Feyd-?Rautha gaped at him, caught in the merest fraction of hesitation. It
was enough for Paul to find the weakness of balance in one of his opponent’s leg
muscles, and their positions were reversed. Feyd-?Rautha lay partly underneath
with right hip high, unable to turn because of the tiny needlepoint caught
against the floor beneath him.

Paul twisted his left hand free, aided by the lubrication of blood from his
arm, thrust once hard up underneath Feyd-?Rautha’s jaw. The point slid home into
the brain. Feyd-?Rautha jerked and sagged back, still held partly on his side by
the needle imbedded in the floor.

Breathing deeply to restore his calm, Paul pushed himself away and got to
his feet. He stood over the body, knife in hand, raised his eyes with deliberate
slowness to look across the room at the Emperor.

“Majesty,” Paul said, “your force is reduced by one more. Shall we now shed
sham and pretense? Shall we now discuss what must be? Your daughter wed to me
and the way opened for an Atreides to sit on the throne.”

The Emperor turned, looked at Count Fenring. The Count met his stare — gray
eyes against green. The thought lay there clearly between them, their
association so long that understanding could be achieved with a glance.

Kill this upstart for me, the Emperor was saying. The Atreides is young and
resourceful, yes — but he is also tired from long effort and he’d be no match
for you, anyway. Call him out now . . . you know the way of it. Kill him.

Slowly, Fenring moved his head, a prolonged turning until he faced Paul.

“Do it!” the Emperor hissed.

The Count focused on Paul, seeing with eyes his Lady Margot had trained in
the Bene Gesserit way, aware of the mystery and hidden grandeur about this
Atreides youth.

I could kill him, Fenring thought — and he knew this for a truth.

Something in his own secretive depths stayed the Count then, and he glimpsed
briefly, inadequately, the advantage he held over Paul — a way of hiding from
the youth, a furtiveness of person and motives that no eye could penetrate.

Paul, aware of some of this from the way the time nexus boiled, understood
at last why he had never seen Fenring along the webs of prescience. Fenring was
one of the might-?have-?beens, an almost Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in
the genetic pattern — a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and
inner seclusion. A deep compassion for the Count flowed through Paul, the first
sense of brotherhood he’d ever experienced.
Fenring, reading Paul’s emotion, said, “Majesty, I must refuse.”

Rage overcame Shaddam IV. He took two short steps through the entourage,
cuffed Fenring viciously across the jaw.

A dark flush spread up and over the Count’s face. He looked directly at the
Emperor, spoke with deliberate lack of emphasis: “We have been friends, Majesty.
What I do now is out of friendship. I shall forget that you struck me.”

Paul cleared his throat, said: “We were speaking of the throne, Majesty.”

The Emperor whirled, glared at Paul. “I sit on the throne!” he barked.

“You shall have a throne on Salusa Secundus,” Paul said.

“I put down my arms and came here on your word of bond!” the Emperor
shouted. “You dare threaten –”

“Your person is safe in my presence,” Paul said. “An Atreides promised it.
Muad’Dib, however, sentences you to your prison planet. But have no fear,
Majesty. I will ease the harshness of the place with all the powers at my
disposal. It shall become a garden world, full of gentle things.”

As the hidden import of Paul’s words grew in the Emperor’s mind, he glared
across the room at Paul. “Now we see true motives,” he sneered.

“Indeed,” Paul said.

“And what of Arrakis?” the Emperor asked. “Another garden world full of
gentle things?”

“The Fremen have the word of Muad’Dib,” Paul said. “There will be flowing
water here open to the sky and green oases rich with good things. But we have
the spice to think of, too. Thus, there will always be desert on Arrakis . . .
and fierce winds, and trials to toughen a man. We Fremen have a saying: ‘God
created Arrakis to train the faithful.’ One cannot go against the word of God.”

The old Truthsayer, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, had her own view
of the hidden meaning in Paul’s words now. She glimpsed the jihad and said: “You
cannot loose these people upon the universe!”

“You will think back to the gentle ways of the Sardaukar!” Paul snapped.

“You cannot,” she whispered.

“You’re a Truthsayer,” Paul said. “Review your words.” He glanced at the
Princess Royal, back to the Emperor. “Best be done quickly, Majesty.”

The Emperor turned a stricken look upon his daughter. She touched his arm,
spoke soothingly: “For this I was trained, Father.”

He took a deep breath.

“You cannot stay this thing,” the old Truthsayer muttered.

The Emperor straightened, standing stiffly with a look of remembered
dignity. “Who will negotiate for you, kinsman?” he asked.

Paul turned, saw his mother, her eyes heavy-?lidded, standing with Chani in a
squad of Fedaykin guards. He crossed to them, stood looking down at Chani.

“I know the reasons,” Chani whispered. “If it must be . . . Usul.”

Paul, hearing the secret tears in her voice, touched her cheek. “My Sihaya
need fear nothing, ever,” he whispered. He dropped his arm, faced his mother.
“You will negotiate for me. Mother, with Chani by your side. She has wisdom and
sharp eyes. And it is wisely said that no one bargains tougher than a Fremen.
She will be looking through the eyes of her love for me and with the thought of
her sons to be, what they will need. Listen to her.”

Jessica sensed the harsh calculation in her son, put down a shudder. “What
are your instructions?” she asked.

“The Emperor’s entire CHOAM Company holdings as dowry,” he said.

“Entire?” She was shocked almost speechless.

“He is to be stripped. I’ll want an earldom and CHOAM directorship for
Gurney Halleck, and him in the fief of Caladan. There will be titles and
attendant power for every surviving Atreides man, not excepting the lowliest
trooper.”

“What of the Fremen?” Jessica asked.
“The Fremen are mine,” Paul said. “What they receive shall be dispensed by
Muad’Dib. It’ll begin with Stilgar as Governor on Arrakis, but that can wait.”

“And for me?” Jessica asked.

“Is there something you wish?”

“Perhaps Caladan,” she said, looking at Gurney. “I’m not certain. I’ve
become too much the Fremen . . . and the Reverend Mother. I need a time of peace
and stillness in which to think.”

“That you shall have,” Paul said, “and anything else that Gurney or I can
give you.”

Jessica nodded, feeling suddenly old and tired. She looked at Chani. “And
for the royal concubine?”

“No title for me,” Chani whispered. “Nothing. I beg of you.”

Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood
once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence. “I
swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over
there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing
and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the
Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me
than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of
desire.”

“So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tail
princess.

“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess
standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a
literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little
else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will
have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine — never to know a
moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who
carry the name of concubine — history will call us wives.”