Dune (9 page)

”It’s a female thing,“ she said.

He smiled. ”Well, assignment of rooms: make certain, I have large office
space next my sleeping quarters. There’ll be more paper work here than on
Caladan. A guard room, of course. That should cover it. Don’t worry about
security of the house. Hawat’s men have been over it in depth.“

”I’m sure they have.“

He glanced at his wristwatch. ”And you might see that all our timepieces are
adjusted for Arrakeen local. I’ve assigned a tech to take care of it. He’ll be
along presently.“ He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. ”I
must return to the landing field now. The second shuttle’s due any minute with
my staff reserves.“

”Couldn’t Hawat meet them, my Lord? You look so tired.“

”The good Thufir is even busier than I am. You know this planet’s infested
with Harkonnen intrigues. Besides, I must try persuading some of the trained
spice hunters against leaving. They have the option, you know, with the change
of fief — and this planetologist the Emperor and the Landsraad installed as
Judge of the Change cannot be bought. He’s allowing the opt. About eight hundred
trained hands expect to go out on the spice shuttle and there’s a Guild cargo
ship standing by.“

”My Lord . . . “ She broke off, hesitating.

”Yes?“

He will not be persuaded against trying to make this planet secure for us,
she thought. And I cannot use my tricks on him.

”At what time will you be expecting dinner?“ she asked.

That’s not what she was going to say, he thought. Ah-?h-?h-?h, my Jessica,
would that we were somewhere else, anywhere away from this terrible place —
alone, the two of us, without a care.

”I’ll eat in the officers’ mess at the field,“ he said. ”Don’t expect me
until very late. And . . .ah, I’ll be sending a guardcar for Paul. I want him to
attend our strategy conference.“

He cleared his throat as though to say something else, then, without
warning, turned and strode out, headed for the entry where she could hear more
boxes being deposited. His voice sounded once from there, commanding and
disdainful, the way he always spoke to servants when he was in a hurry: ”The
Lady Jessica’s in the Great Hall. Join her there immediately.”

The outer door slammed.

Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto’s father. It had been done
by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old Duke’s middle years. He was portrayed
in matador costume with a magenta cape flung over his left arm. The face looked
young, hardly older than Leto’s now, and with the same hawk features, the same
gray stare. She clenched her fists at her sides, glared at the painting.
“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!” she whispered.

“What are your orders, Noble Born?”

It was a woman’s voice, thin and stringy.

Jessica whirled, stared down at a knobby, gray-?haired woman in a shapeless
sack dress of bondsman brown. The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any
member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field
that morning. Every native she had seen on this planet, Jessica thought, looked
prune dry and undernourished. Yet, Leto had said they were strong and vital. And
there were the eyes, of course — that wash of deepest, darkest blue without any
white — secretive, mysterious. Jessica forced herself not to stare.

The woman gave a stiff-?necked nod, said: “I am called the Shadout Mapes,
Noble Born. What are your orders?”

“You may refer to me as ‘my Lady,’ ” Jessica said. “I’m not noble born. I’m
the bound concubine of the Duke Leto.”

Again that strange nod, and the woman peered upward at Jessica with a sly
questioning, “There’s a wife, then?”

“There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke’s only . . .
companion, the mother of his heir-?designate.”

Even as she spoke, Jessica laughed inwardly at the pride behind her words.
What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body
and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.” Yes — I am meeting
more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.

A weird cry sounded from the road outside the house. It was repeated: “Soo-
soo-?Sook! Soo-?soo-?Sook!” Then: “Ikhut-?eigh! Ikhut-?eigh!” And again: “Soo-?soo-
Sook!”

“What is that?” Jessica asked. “I heard it several times as we drove through
the streets this morning.”

“Only a water-?seller, my Lady. But you’ve no need to interest yourself in
such as they. The cistern here holds fifty thousand liters and it’s always kept
full.” She glanced down at her dress. “Why, you know, my Lady, I don’t even have
to wear my stillsuit here?” She cackled. “And me not even dead!”

Jessica hesitated, wanting to question this Fremen woman, needing data to
guide her. But bringing order of the confusion in the castle was more
imperative. Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark
of wealth here.

“My husband told me of your title, Shadout,” Jessica said. “I recognized the
word. It’s a very ancient word.”

“You know the ancient tongues then?” Mapes asked, and she waited with an odd
intensity.

“Tongues are the Bene Gesserit’s first learning,” Jessica said. “I know the
Bhotani Jib and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages.”

Mapes nodded. “Just as the legend says.”

And Jessica wondered: Why do I play out this sham? But the Bene Gesserit
ways were devious and compelling.

“I know the Dark Things and the ways of the Great Mother,” Jessica said. She
read the more obvious signs in Mapes’ actions and appearance, the petit
betrayals. “Miseces prejia,” she said in the Chakobsa tongue. “Andral t’re pera!
Trada cik buscakri miseces perakri –”

Mapes took a backward step, appeared poised to flee.

“I know many things.” Jessica said. “I know that you have borne children,
that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have
done violence and will yet do more violence. I know many things.”

In a low voice, Mapes said: “I meant no offense, my Lady.”

“You speak of the legend and seek answers,” Jessica said. “Beware the
answers you may find. I know you came prepared for violence with a weapon in
your bodice.”

“My Lady, I . . . ”
“There’s a remote possibility you could draw my life’s blood,” Jessica said,
“but in so doing you’d bring down more ruin than your wildest fears could
imagine. There are worse things than dying, you know — even for an entire
people.”

“My Lady!” Mapes pleaded. She appeared about to fall to her knees. “The
weapon was sent as a gift to you should you prove to be the One.”

“And as the means of my death should I prove otherwise,” Jessica said. She
waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bene Gesserit-?trained so
terrifying in combat.

Now we see which way the decision tips, she thought.

Slowly, Mapes reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath.
A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took sheath in one
hand and handle in the other, withdrew a milk-?white blade, held it up. The blade
seemed to shine and glitter with a light of its own. It was double-?edged like a
kindjal and the blade was perhaps twenty centimeters long.

“Do you know this, my Lady?” Mapes asked.

It could only be one thing, Jessica knew, the fabled crysknife of Arrakis,
the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor
and wild gossip.

“It’s a crysknife,” she said.

“Say it not lightly,” Mapes said. “Do you know its meaning?”

And Jessica thought: There was an edge to that question. Here’s the reason
this Fremen has taken service with me, to ask that one question. My answer could
precipitate violence or . . . what? She seeks an answer from me: the meaning of
a knife. She’s called the Shadow in the Chakobsa tongue. Knife, that’s “Death
Maker” in Chakobsa. She’s getting restive. I must answer now. Delay is as
dangerous as the wrong answer.

Jessica said: “It’s a maker –”

“Eighe-?e-?e-?e-?e-?e!” Mapes wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation.
She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection
shooting around the room.

Jessica waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of
death and then add the ancient word, but every sense warned her now, all the
deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle
twitch.

The key word was . . . maker.

Maker? Maker.

Still, Mapes held the knife as though ready to use it.

Jessica said: “Did you think that I, knowing the mysteries of the Great
Mother, would not know the Maker?”

Mapes lowered the knife. “My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so
long, the moment of revelation is a shock.”

Jessica thought about the prophecy — the Shari-?a and all the panoplia
propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long
centuries ago — long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the
protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene
Gesserit’s need.

Well, that day had come.

Mapes returned knife to sheath, said: “This is an unfixed blade, my Lady.
Keep it near you. More than a week away from flesh and it begins to
disintegrate. It’s yours, a tooth of shai-?hulud, for as long as you live.”

Jessica reached out her right hand, risked a gamble: “Mapes, you’ve sheathed
that blade unblooded.”

With a gasp, Mapes dropped the sheathed knife into Jessica’s hand, tore open
the brown bodice, wailing: “Take the water of my life!”

Jessica withdrew the blade from its sheath. How it glittered! She directed
the point toward Mapes, saw a fear greater than death-?panic come over the woman.
Poison in the point? Jessica wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate
scratch with the blade’s edge above Mapes’ left breast. There was a thick
welling of blood that stopped almost immediately. Ultrafast coagulation, Jessica
thought. A moisture-?conserving mutation?

She sheathed the blade, said: “Button your dress, Mapes.”

Mapes obeyed, trembling. The eyes without whites stared at Jessica. “You are
ours,” she muttered. “You are the One.”

There came another sound of unloading in the entry. Swiftly, Mapes grabbed
the sheathed knife, concealed it in Jessica’s bodice. “Who sees that knife must
be cleansed or slain!” she snarled. “You know that, my Lady!”

I know it now, Jessica thought.

The cargo handlers left without intruding on the Great Hall.

Mapes composed herself, said: “The uncleansed who have seen a crysknife may
not leave Arrakis alive. Never forget that, my Lady. You’ve been entrusted with
a crysknife.” She took a deep breath. “Now the thing must take its course. It
cannot be hurried.” She glanced at the stacked boxes and piled goods around
them. “And there’s work aplenty to while the time for us here.”

Jessica hesitated. “The thing must take its course.” That was a specific
catchphrase from the Missionaria Protectiva’s stock of incantations — The
coming of the Reverend Mother to free you.

But I’m not a Reverend Mother, Jessica thought. And then: Great Mother! They
planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!

In matter-?of-?fact tones, Mapes said: “What’ll you be wanting me to do first,
my Lady?”

Instinct warned Jessica to match that casual tone. She said: “The painting
of the Old Duke over there, it must be hung on one side of the dining hall. The
bull’s head must go on the wall opposite the painting.”

Mapes crossed to the bull’s head. “What a great beast it must have been to
carry such a head,” she said. She stooped. “I’ll have to be cleaning this first,
won’t I, my Lady?”

“No.”

“But there’s dirt caked on its horns.”

“That’s not dirt, Mapes. That’s the blood of our Duke’s father. Those horns
were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after this beast killed
the Old Duke.”

Mapes stood up. “Ah, now!” she said.

“It’s just blood,” Jessica said. “Old blood at that. Get some help hanging
these now. The beastly things are heavy.”

“Did you think the blood bothered me?” Mapes asked. “I’m of the desert and
I’ve seen blood aplenty.”

“I . . . see that you have,” Jessica said.

“And some of it my own,” Mapes said. “More’n you drew with your puny
scratch.”

“You’d rather I’d cut deeper?”

“Ah, no! The body’s water is scant enough ‘thout gushing a wasteful lot of
it into the air. You did the thing right.”

And Jessica, noting the words and manner, caught the deeper implications in
the phrase, ‘the body’s water.’ Again she felt a sense of oppression at the
importance of water on Arrakis.

“On which side of the dining hall shall I hang which one of these pretties,
my Lady?” Mapes asked.

Ever the practical one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. She said: “Use your own
judgment, Mapes. It makes no real difference.”

“As you say, my Lady.” Mapes stooped, began clearing wrappings and twine
from the head. “Killed an old duke, did you?” she crooned.

“Shall I summon a handler to help you?” Jessica asked.

“I’ll manage, my Lady.”
Yes, she’ll manage, Jessica thought. There’s that about this Fremen
creature: the drive to manage.

Jessica felt the cold sheath of the crysknife beneath her bodice, thought of
the long chain of Bene Gesserit scheming that had forged another link here.
Because of that scheming, she had survived a deadly crisis. “It cannot be
hurried,” Mapes had said. Yet there was a tempo of headlong rushing to this
place that filled Jessica with foreboding. And not all the preparations of the
Missionaria Protectiva nor Hawat’s suspicious inspection of this castellated
pile of rocks could dispel the feeling.

“When you’ve finished hanging those, start unpacking the boxes,” Jessica
said. “One of the cargo men at the entry has all the keys and knows where things
should go. Get the keys and the list from him. If there are any questions I’ll
be in the south wing.”