"Have you been infected, then?" Edric asked. He turned slowly in the orange gas, wondering why Scytale's words carried such a tone of fear. Had the Face Dancer broken from the conspiracy? There was no way to peer into the future and examine this now. The future had become a muddy stream, clogged with prophets.
"We're all contaminated," Scytale said, and he reminded himself that Edric's intelligence had severe limits. How could this point be made that the Guildsman would understand it?
"But when we destroy him," Edric said, "the contag--"
"I should leave you in this ignorance," Scytale said. "But my duties will not permit it. Besides, it's dangerous to all of us."
Edric recoiled, steadied himself with a kick of one webbed foot which sent the orange gas whipping around his legs. "You speak strangely," he said.
"This whole thing is explosive," Scytale said in a calmer voice. "It's ready to shatter. When it goes, it will send bits of itself out through the centuries. Don't you see this?"
"We've dealt with religions before," Edric protested. "If this new--"
"It is not just a religion!" Scytale said, wondering what the Reverend Mother would say to this harsh education of their fellow conspirator. "Religious government is something else. Muad'dib has crowded his Qizarate in everywhere, displaced the old functions of government. But he has no permanent civil service, no interlocking embassies. He has bishoprics, islands of authority. At the center of each island is a man. Men learn how to gain and hold personal power. Men are jealous."
"When they're divided, we'll absorb them one by one," Edric said with a complacent smile. "Cut off the head and the body will fall to--"
"This body has two heads," Scytale said.
"The sister--who may wed."
"Who will certainly wed."
"I don't like your tone, Scytale."
"And I don't like your ignorance."
"What if she does wed? Will that shake our plans?"
"It will shake the universe."
"But they're not unique. I, myself, possess powers which--"
"You're an infant. You toddle where they stride."
"They are not unique!"
"You forget, Guildsman, that we once made a kwisatz haderach. This is a being filled by the spectacle of Time. It is a form of existence which cannot be threatened without enclosing yourself in the identical threat. Muad'dib knows we would attack his Chani. We must move faster than we have. You must get to the ghola, prod him as I have instructed."
"And if I do not?"
"We will feel the thunderbolt."
Oh, worm of many teeth,
Canst thou deny what has no cure?
The flesh and breath which lure thee
To the ground of all beginnings
Feed on monsters twisting in a door of fire!
Thou hast no robe in all thy attire
To cover intoxications of divinity
Or hide the burnings of desire!
--WORMSONG FROM THE DUNEBOOK
Paul had worked up a sweat on the practice floor using crysknife and short sword against the ghola. He stood now at a window looking down into the temple plaza, tried to imagine the scene with Chani at the clinic. She'd been taken ill at midmorning, the sixth week of her pregnancy. The medics were the best. They'd call when they had news.
Murky afternoon sandclouds darkened the sky over the plaza. Fremen called such weather "dirty air."
Would the medics never call? Each second struggled past, reluctant to enter his universe.
Waiting ... waiting ... The Bene Gesserit sent no word from Wallach. Deliberately delaying, of course.
Prescient vision had recorded these moments, but he shielded his awareness from the oracle, preferring the role here of a Timefish swimming not where he willed, but where the currents carried him. Destiny permitted no struggles now.
The ghola could be heard racking weapons, examining the equipment. Paul sighed, put a hand to his own belt, deactivated his shield. The tingling passage of its field ran down against his skin.
He'd face events when Chani came, Paul told himself. Time enough then to accept the fact that what he'd concealed from her had prolonged her life. Was it evil, he wondered, to prefer Chani to an heir? By what right did he make her choice for her? Foolish thoughts! Who could hesitate, given the alternatives--slave pits, torture, agonizing sorrow ... and worse.
He heard the door open, Chani's footsteps.
Paul turned.
Murder sat on Chani's face. The wide Fremen belt which gathered the waist of her golden robe, the water rings worn as a necklace, one hand at her hip (never far from the knife), the trenchant stare which was her first inspection of any room--everything about her stood now only as a background for violence.
He opened his arms as she came to him, gathered her close.
"Someone," she rasped, speaking against his breast, "has been feeding me a contraceptive for a long time ... before I began the new diet. There'll be problems with this birth because of it."
"But there are remedies?" he asked.
"Dangerous remedies. I know the source of that poison! I'll have her blood."
"My Sihaya," he whispered, holding her close to calm a sudden trembling. "You'll bear the heir we want. Isn't that enough?"
"My life burns faster," she said, pressing against him. "The birth now controls my life. The medics told me it goes at a terrible pace. I must eat and eat ... and take more spice, as well ... eat it, drink it. I'll kill her for this!"
Paul kissed her cheek. "No, my Sihaya. You'll kill no one." And he thought: Irulan prolonged your life, beloved. For you, the time of birth is the time of death.
He felt hidden grief drain his marrow then, empty his life into a black flask.
Chani pushed away from him. "She cannot be forgiven!"
"Who said anything about forgiving?"
"Then why shouldn't I kill her?"
It was such a flat, Fremen question that Paul felt himself almost overcome by a hysterical desire to laugh. He covered it by saying: "It wouldn't help."
"You've seen that?"
Paul felt his belly tighten with vision-memory.
"What I've seen ... what I've seen ..." he muttered. Every aspect of surrounding events fitted a present which paralyzed him. He felt chained to a future which, exposed too often, had locked onto him like a greedy succubus. Tight dryness clogged his throat. Had he followed the witchcall of his own oracle, he wondered, until it'd spilled him into a merciless present?
"Tell me what you've seen," Chani said.
"I can't."
"Why mustn't I kill her?"
"Because I ask it."
He watched her accept this. She did it the way sand accepted water: absorbing and concealing. Was there obedience beneath that hot, angry surface? he wondered. And he realized then that life in the royal Keep had left Chani unchanged. She'd merely stopped here for a time, inhabited a way station on a journey with her man. Nothing of the desert had been taken from her.
Chani stepped away from him then, glanced at the ghola who stood waiting near the diamond circle of the practice door.
"You've been crossing blades with him?" she asked.
"And I'm better for it."
Her gaze went to the circle on the floor, back to the ghola's metallic eyes.
"I don't like it," she said.
"He's not intended to do me violence," Paul said.
"You've seen that?"
"I've not seen it!"
"Then how do you know?"
"Because he's more than ghola; he's Duncan Idaho."
"The Bene Tleilax made him."
"They made more than they intended."
She shook her head. A corner of her nezhoni scarf rubbed the collar of her robe. "How can you change the fact that he is ghola?"
"Hayt," Paul said, "are you the tool of my undoing?"
"If the substance of here and now is changed, the future is changed," the ghola said.
"That is no answer!" Chani obj
ected.
Paul raised his voice: "How will I die, Hayt?"
Light glinted from the artificial eyes. "It is said, m'Lord, that you will die of money and power."
Chani stiffened. "How dare he speak thus to you?"
"The mentat is truthful," Paul said.
"Was Duncan Idaho a real friend?" she asked.
"He gave his life for me."
"It is sad," Chani whispered, "that a ghola cannot be restored to his original being."
"Would you convert me?" the ghola asked, directing his gaze to Chani.
"What does he mean?" Chani asked.
"To be converted is to be turned around," Paul said. "But there's no going back."
"Every man carries his own past with him," Hayt said.
"And every ghola?" Paul asked.
"In a way, m'Lord."
"Then what of that past in your secret flesh?" Paul asked.
Chani saw how the question disturbed the ghola. His movements quickened, hands clenched into fists. She glanced at Paul, wondering why he probed thus. Was there a way to restore this creature to the man he'd been?
"Has a ghola ever remembered his real past?" Chani asked.
"Many attempts have been made," Hayt said, his gaze fixed on the floor near his feet. "No ghola has ever been restored to his former being."
"But you long for this to happen," Paul said.
The blank surfaces of the ghola's eyes came up to center on Paul with a pressing intensity. "Yes!"
Voice soft, Paul said: "If there's a way ..."
"This flesh," Hayt said, touching left hand to forehead in a curious saluting movement, "is not the flesh of my original birth. It is ... reborn. Only the shape is familiar. A Face Dancer might do as well."
"Not as well," Paul said. "And you're not a Face Dancer."
"That is true, m'Lord."
"Whence comes your shape?"
"The genetic imprint of the original cells."
"Somewhere," Paul said, "there's a plastic something which remembers the shape of Duncan Idaho. It's said the ancients probed this region before the Butlerian Jihad. What's the extent of this memory, Hayt? What did it learn from the original?"
The ghola shrugged.
"What if he wasn't Idaho?" Chani asked.
"He was."
"Can you be certain?" she asked.
"He is Duncan in every aspect. I cannot imagine a force strong enough to hold that shape thus without any relaxation or any deviation."
"M'Lord!" Hayt objected. "Because we cannot imagine a thing, that doesn't exclude it from reality. There are things I must do as a ghola that I would not do as a man."
Keeping his attention on Chani, Paul said: "You see?" She nodded. Paul turned away, fighting deep sadness. He crossed to the balcony windows, drew the draperies. Lights came on in the sudden gloom. He pulled the sash of his robe tight, listened for sounds behind him.
Nothing.
He turned. Chani stood as though entranced, her gaze centered on the ghola.
Hayt, Paul saw, had retreated to some inner chamber of his being--had gone back to the ghola place.
Chani turned at the sound of Paul's return. She still felt the thrall dom of the instant Paul had precipitated. For a brief moment, the ghola had been an intense, vital human being. For that moment, he had been someone she did not fear--indeed, someone she liked and admired. Now, she understood Paul's purpose in this probing. He had wanted her to see the man in the ghola flesh.
She stared at Paul. "That man, was that Duncan Idaho?"
"That was Duncan Idaho. He is still there."
"Would he have allowed Irulan to go on living?" Chani asked.
The water didn't sink too deep, Paul thought. And he said: "If I commanded it."
"I don't understand," she said. "Shouldn't you be angry?"
"I am angry."
"You don't sound ... angry. You sound sorrowful."
He closed his eyes. "Yes. That, too."
"You're my man," she said. "I know this, but suddenly I don't understand you."
Abruptly, Paul felt that he walked down a long cavern. His flesh moved--one foot and then another--but his thoughts went elsewhere. "I don't understand myself," he whispered. When he opened his eyes, he found that he had moved away from Chani.
She spoke from somewhere behind him. "Beloved, I'll not ask again what you've seen. I only know I'm to give you the heir we want."
He nodded, then: "I've known that from the beginning." He turned, studied her. Chani seemed very far away.
She drew herself up, placed a hand on her abdomen. "I'm hungry. The medics tell me I must eat three or four times what I ate before. I'm frightened, beloved. It goes too fast."
Too fast, he agreed. This fetus knows the necessity for speed.
The audacious nature of Muad'dib's actions may be seen in the fact that He knew from the beginning whither He was bound, yet not once did He step aside from that path. He put it clearly when He said: "I tell you that I come now to my time of testing when it will be shown that I am the Ultimate Servant." Thus He weaves all into One, that both friend and foe may worship Him. It is for this reason and this reason only that His Apostles prayed: "Lord, save us from the other paths which Muad'dib covered with the Waters of His Life." Those "other paths" may be imagined only with the deepest revulsion.
--FROM THE YIAM-EL-DIN (BOOK OF JUDGMENT)
The messenger was a young woman--her face, name and family known to Chani--which was how she'd penetrated Imperial Security.
Chani had done no more than identify her for a Security Officer named Bannerjee, who then arranged the meeting with Muad'dib. Bannerjee acted out of instinct and the assurance that the young woman's father had been a member of the Emperor's Death Commandos, the dreaded Fedaykin, in the days before the Jihad. Otherwise, he might have ignored her plea that her message was intended only for the ears of Muad'dib.
She was, of course, screened and searched before the meeting in Paul's private office. Even so, Bannerjee accompanied her, hand on knife, other hand on her arm.
It was almost midday when they brought her into the room--an odd space, mixture of desert-Fremen and Family-Aristocrat. Hiereg hangings lined three walls: delicate tapestries adorned with figures out of Fremen mythology. A view screen covered the fourth wall, a silver-gray surface behind an oval desk whose top held only one object, a Fremen sandclock built into an orrery. The orrery, a suspensor mechanism from Ix, carried both moons of Arrakis in the classic Worm Trine aligned with the sun.
Paul, standing beside the desk, glanced at Bannerjee. The Security Officer was one of those who'd come up through the Fremen Constabulary, winning his place on brains and proven loyalty despite the smuggler ancestry attested by his name. He was a solid figure, almost fat. Wisps of black hair fell down over the dark, wet-appearing skin of his forehead like the crest of an exotic bird. His eyes were blue-blue and steady in a gaze which could look upon happiness or atrocity without change of expression. Both Chani and Stilgar trusted him. Paul knew that if he told Bannerjee to throttle the girl immediately, Bannerjee would do it.
"Sire, here is the messenger girl," Bannerjee said. "M'Lady Chani said she sent word to you."
"Yes." Paul nodded curtly.
Oddly, the girl didn't look at him. Her attention remained on the orrery. She was dark-skinned, of medium height, her figure concealed beneath a robe whose rich wine fabric and simple cut spoke of wealth. Her blue-black hair was held in a narrow band of material which matched the robe. The robe concealed her hands. Paul suspected that the hands were tightly clasped. It would be in character. Everything about her would be in character--including the robe: a last piece of finery saved for such a moment.
Paul motioned Bannerjee aside. He hesitated before obeying. Now, the girl moved--one step forward. When she moved there was grace. Still, her eyes avoided him.
Paul cleared his throat.
Now the girl lifted her gaze, the whiteless eyes widening with just the right shade of awe. She
had an odd little face with delicate chin, a sense of reserve in the way she held her small mouth. The eyes appeared abnormally large above slanted cheeks. There was a cheerless air about her, something which said she seldom smiled. The corners of her eyes even held a faint yellow misting which could have been from dust irritation or the tracery of semuta.
Everything was in character.
"You asked to see me," Paul said.
The moment of supreme test for this girl-shape had come. Scytale had put on the shape, the mannerisms, the sex, the voice--everything his abilities could grasp and assume. But this was a female known to Muad'dib in the sietch days. She'd been a child, then, but she and Muad'dib shared common experiences. Certain areas of memory must be avoided delicately. It was the most exacting part Scytale had ever attempted.
"I am Otheym's Lichna of Berk al Dib."
The girl's voice came out small, but firm, giving name, father and pedigree.
Paul nodded. He saw how Chani had been fooled. The timbre of voice, everything reproduced with exactitude. Had it not been for his own Bene Gesserit training in voice and for the web of dao in which oracular vision enfolded him, this Face-Dancer disguise might have gulled even him.
Training exposed certain discrepancies: the girl was older than her known years; too much control tuned the vocal cords; set of neck and shoulders missed by a fraction the subtle hauteur of Fremen poise. But there were niceties, too: the rich robe had been patched to betray actual status ... and the features were beautifully exact. They spoke a certain sympathy of this Face Dancer for the role being played.
"Rest in my home, daughter of Otheym," Paul said in formal Fremen greeting. "You are welcome as water after a dry crossing."
The faintest of relaxations exposed the confidence this apparent acceptance had conveyed.
"I bring a message," she said.
"A man's messenger is as himself," Paul said.
Scytale breathed softly. It went well, but now came the crucial task: the Atreides must be guided onto that special path. He must lose his Fremen concubine in circumstances where no other shared the blame. The failure must belong only to the omnipotent Muad'dib. He had to be led into an ultimate realization of his failure and thence to acceptance of the Tleilaxu alternative.
"I am the smoke which banishes sleep in the night," Scytale said, employing a Fedaykin code phrase: I bear bad tidings.
Paul fought to maintain calmness. He felt naked, his soul abandoned in a groping-time concealed from every vision. Powerful oracles hid this Face Dancer. Only the edges of these moments were known to Paul. He knew only what he could not do. He could not slay this Face Dancer. That would precipitate the future which must be avoided at all cost. Somehow, a way must be found to reach into the darkness and change the terrifying pattern.