Road to Dune (40 page)

With a piercing yell, the guildsman jerked his hand away from the hole, held up a bloody palm.

Alia withdrew the reddened blade tip, held it up for Duncan to see.

“Human blood, I’ll bet you,” she said. And she extended the blade toward one of her guards, said: “Bannerjee, wipe this blade clean and take the wiping to a techman. I want this blood analyzed. I would know what humanity it shares with me … and how it differs.”

Edric the Steersman had produced a cloth from his pouch. He wrapped his injured hand, stuffed another piece of material into the hole in his tank.

“What do I share with you?” he demanded, glaring at Alia. “I share the common bondage of all life. But the dark memories of your savagery—I no longer share those!”

“I think you have another bondage which is not common,” Alia said. “What think you, Hayt?” she demanded, glancing at Duncan.

Instead of answering, the ghola said: “Why do you call me that?”

“Hayt?” she asked. “Is that not how you’re called?”

“Yes.” The answer was filled with reluctance.

“Can you answer my question?” she asked.

Duncan nodded. “The air this guildsman breathes is saturated with mélange. That says much about him.”

“Those capsules we see him pop into his mouth so frequently,” Alia said, “do they not add to the picture?”

“More of the spice, I’d say,” Duncan agreed.

“The dosage with which this guildsman maintains himself staggers the imagination,” Alia said. “How do you compute this?”

Duncan took a deep breath, his manner growing remote in Mentat withdrawal. Presently, he said: “The steersmen of the Guild use the spice to heighten their prescient powers. Without it they cannot divine the safest paths for their heighliners to course through space. In their duties, they must use more and more and more mélange …”

“The dosage requirements must increase at a rate which is compounded by a pressure of their need,” Alia said. “It is a thing which both my brother and I have sensed.”

“You are fools!” Edric raged.

Alia turned, studied the guildsman swimming in his tank. The orange gas had thinned and he appeared pale hanging there in his suspensors.

“Have you chosen your defender?” she asked.

“I choose the Reverend Mother you hold prisoner,” Edric snapped. “Gaius Helen Mohiam!”

“Very well,” Alia said. She turned to the guard captain. “The ambassador is to be held in custody under constant visual guard until his trial,” she said. “I wish daily reports on his activities. Meanwhile, you will drain the gas from his tank and have it subjected to analysis. Replace the gas with the pure air of Arrakis.”

“You cannot!” the guildsman protested. “You mustn’t.”

“Why not?” Alia asked. “Will it kill you?”

“You know it won’t,” he hissed, bringing his face close to the transparent wall of his tank.

“It will blind his oracular vision,” Duncan said.

“You have no human feelings!” Edric said. Extreme agitation shook his body.

“Human feeling?” Alia asked. “What is this birdflap about human feeling? When you’ve failed, you fall back on this intense inner thing which is outraged by violence. Hah! Let me tell you something, gambler, human feeling’s a feeble argument which labels the loser. You failed to measure the consequences, gambler.”

“What did you call me?” Edric asked, shock apparent in his voice even through the transponders.

“Gambler!” Alia said. “I pay you a compliment.”

“You can’t be serious,” Edric protested.

“Gamblers and ecologists are the only ones who truly
measure
consequences,” Alia said. “We of the oracles are always gamblers. We’re a step beyond politicians and businessmen, I give you that.”

The guildsman shook his head, a fish-motion that sent tremors down his body. “I beg of you not to take the spice from my air,” he pleaded.

“With what would you buy that boon?” Alia asked.

“Buy?”

“My brother’s government is always willing to bargain,” Alia said.

“Buy?” Edric repeated, his voice louder.

“When you come down to it,” Alia said in a reasonable tone, “all government is business. ‘Fortune passes everywhere,’ as my father often said.” She glanced sideways at Duncan, found his metallic eyes hidden by closed lids. It gave him an odd, more human look, a figure in repose. Ghola substance was masked.

As though he felt her glance, Duncan opened his eyelids. The metal orbs glistened as they turned toward her.

“Governments always conveniently overlook their own inequities,” he said. “This I was taught. Do you not see how you play your enemy’s game?”

Anger sent color into Alia’s cheeks.

“There are some questions you may not ask!” she snapped.

“When force closes the mouth of inquiry,” Duncan said, “that is the death of civilization.”

Alia glared at him, brought her quickened breathing under control. Platitudes!

Edric was staring at the ghola. The guildsman twisted his body around, attention focused on the pair beside his tank.

“Hayt,” Edric said, “will you help in my defense?”

Alia whirled. “You presume too much, Ambassador!”

“Do I?” Edric asked, studying Duncan.

“Indeed you do,” Duncan said. “I was a gift to House Atreides, freely given, freely accepted. You no longer have demands upon my services.”

“My brother must be notified at once,” Alia said, speaking softly. “His judgment is, after all, the one which must prevail.”

“You take the law too lightly,” the guildsman snarled. “Its language is plain enough that even the lowliest citizen can understand it.”

“The language of the law,” Alia said, “means only what my brother says it means.”

With an air of finality, she turned away, motioned her guards to close behind, strode to the dais. There, she turned. “Hayt,” she said, “you will accompany me.”

Duncan shrugged, fell into step with the guards.

He could hear other guards behind him taking the guildsman’s tank into tow, moving it down the chamber. Still more guards, he realized, would be hurrying to collect the bodies and reclaim their water.

Alia’s men were, after all, Fremen.

New Chapter:
THE HUMAN DISTRANS

(The character Otmo was changed to Korba in the published version of
Dune Messiah.
)

He found the guard swarming in the parade yard, a scene of frantic confusion with rumors passing from mouth to mouth in a clamorous, intimidating babble.

Both moons were up and full, but they were on the windowless side of the passage by which Paul returned to the Keep. The hall had been left in darkness broken only by a single shaft of light from the door to the Interrogation Salon. Lack of illumination in the approach was a Security rule. Darkness made one a difficult target.

Word had preceded him on the fight at Otheym’s house, and now there were loud cries from the guard area as it was learned the Emperor had returned. Guardsmen wavered into view from the Salon with the light behind them.

Two of Stilgar’s men carried Bijaz between them ahead of Paul. The dwarf’s short legs couldn’t be allowed to slow down the Imperial party. Bijaz, recovered from his fright, was darting glances all around, eyes alert and inquiring.

“Get the Council of Naibs here at once,” Paul commanded as he entered the Salon. “And turn down those lights except for that corner over there.” He gestured. “We’ll question Bijaz there.”

“You do not question a human distrans,” Bijaz said, a dignity in his manner which made some of the guardsmen laugh.

“Listen to him, now,” one of them said. “Would you listen to him?”

“Put him down,” Paul said. “Stilgar? Where is Stilgar?”

“Gone for the Naibs, Sire,” said a man behind him.

Paul recognized Bannerjee’s voice, glanced back, said: “Have you a distrans recorder ready?”

“All ready, Sire.” Bannerjee gestured to an aide who carried a thin recorder tube, its shigawire reel glistening in the end.

Paul looked back at the dwarf, who stood now between two impassive guardsmen, glowglobes bright above them. Beads of perspiration stood out on Bijaz’s forehead. The dwarf seemed now a creature of odd integrity, as though the purpose fashioned into him by the Tleilaxu was projected out through the skin. There was power beneath this mask of cowardice and frivolity, Paul realized.

“Do you truly work as a distrans?” Paul asked.

“Many things work as a distrans, Sire,” Bijaz said. “Anything with a voice and a nervous system can be a distrans. You should know this. You know everything.”

“None of that,” said the guardsman on Bannerjee’s left side, nudging him.

Paul thought of the code word Otheym had imparted by inference—the name of the one killed: Jamis. He felt reluctance to utter the word, to test it on the dwarf. There seemed a demeaning of humanity to use a man as a distrans, even such a man as this.

“Set the recorder for immediate translation,” Paul said.

The guardsman beside Bannerjee adjusted his instrument.

“Jamis,” Paul said.

Bijaz stiffened. A thin keening sound issued from his lips. His eyes were glazed. The keening wavered and twisted.

Paul stared at the recorder as a piping voice began to issue from it. The voice was very slow with long pauses as though spoken out of great weariness. “Tibana was an apologist for Socratic-Christianity,” the thin voice said. “He was probably a native of IV Anbus who lived between the 8
^th
and 9
^th
Centuries, likely in the reign of the Second Corrino. Of Tibana’s writings, only a portion survives from which this fragment is taken—‘The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.’ It is a thing to consider when you contemplate treachery.”

Paul glanced around at the uncomprehending faces of his aides and companions. He had not told them the information Bijaz held and they didn’t know what to expect. Names—would the names of any present be uttered now by this dwarf?

“The Fremen of the deep desert have revived the blood sacrifice to Shai-Hulud,” the recorder piped in time to Bijaz’s keening. “They say the Emperor and his sister are one person, one being back to back, half male, half female.”

Paul saw eyes turn toward him. He felt suddenly that he existed in a dream controlled by some other mind, and that he might momentarily forget this to become lost in the convolutions of that mind.

“Emperor and sister must die together to make the myth real,” the recorder piped. “The words of Otmo the Panygerist are preached in the secret ceremonies. ‘Muad’Dib is the Coriolis storm,’ they say. ‘He is the wind that carries death in its belly. Alia is the lightning which strikes from sand in the dark sky.’ And they shout: ‘Blow out the lamp! Day is here!’ It is the signal they learn for the attack.”

Paul thought of the ancient ritual, mystical, tangled with folk memories, old words, old customs, forgotten meanings—a bloody play of ideas across Time. Ideas … ideas … they carried a terrifying power. They could blot out civilizations or become a blazing light in the mind to illuminate lives across the span of centuries. He looked at the face of the dwarf, seeing youthful eyes in an old face. Eyes of total blue! The dwarf was a mélange addict, then. What could that mean? He studied the eyes, total blue at the center of a network of knobby white lines which ran to the hollows below the temples. Such a large head. All seemed to focus on the pursed mouth from which that monotonous high whine continued to issue.

The names,
Paul thought.
Get to the names.

“Among the Naibs,” the recorder piped, “the traitors are Bikouros and Cahueit. There is Djedida, secretary to Otmo.”

All around him, Paul felt the guardsmen stiffening as they grasped the import of what was occurring here. Bannerjee took a half step forward to stand glaring down at the dwarf.

Bannerjee, too?
Paul wondered. He was obsessed by a feeling of threat. Bikouros, Cahueit, Djedida!

“There is Abumojandis, the aide to Bannerjee,” Bijaz said. “And Eldis …”

Motion erupted beside Paul, a thing he had expected, but not in the form it took. Bannerjee, whirling, placed himself between Paul and the aide with the distrans recorder. The aide had lifted the recorder like a weapon aimed at Paul. A burst of flame darted from the instrument, catching Bannerjee full in the waist. The piping voice of the distrans was stilled but the keening of Bijaz continued as Paul hurled a sliver knife from the sheath in his left sleeve. The knife seemed to sprout from the aide’s throat. Bannerjee staggered back into Paul’s arms, muttered : “M’Lord, I failed you.”

The aide was on the floor, arms outstretched and held by guards, dead eyes staring at the ceiling. Paul recognized the man then: Abumojandis, a Fremen of Balak Sietch from the deep desert. Otheym’s list was true, then—traitors.

Medics pulled Bannerjee from Paul’s arms.

Paul grew aware that Bijaz was going on with that monotonous keening. The distrans recorder remained silent.

“Someone get another recorder!” Paul snapped. “And see if you can shut that creature up!”

Even as he spoke, he knew the dwarf could not be silenced until the message had run its course. It would be a one-way thing: start it and let it run. They’d have to begin again.

“Get him into the other room,” Paul said.

The new flurry of motion his orders had set off was interrupted by the arrival of the Naibs, the Fremen council of Sietch leaders. Stilgar led the procession. He was in his formal robes now, a grim figure beneath a shock of black hair. His craggy face, massive nose and rock-hewn cheekbones held an expression of wary alertness.

“M’Lord,” he said. “What is …”

Paul silenced him with a wave of the hand, searched the procession. Bikouros and Cahueit were not among the others.

“Where are Bikouros and Cahueit?” Paul demanded.

“They have gone to the desert to deliver an observer for the Qizarate,” Stilgar said. “They left while we were … in the city.”

“The observer,” Paul asked. “Who?” As he spoke, he knew who it would have to be.

“Why,” Stilgar said, “Otmo has dispatched his own assistant, Djedida.”