What is his ancestry? she wondered. Whence comes such breeding? She said: "Stilgar, I underestimated you."
"Such was my suspicion," he said.
"Each of us apparently underestimated the other," she said.
"I should like an end to this," he said. "I should like friendship with you ... and trust. I should like that respect for each other which grows in the breast without demand for the huddlings of sex."
"I understand," she said.
"Do you trust me?"
"I hear your sincerity."
"Among us," he said, "the Sayyadina, when they are not the formal leaders, hold a special place of honor. They teach. They maintain the strength of God here." He touched his breast.
Now I must probe this Reverend Mother mystery, she thought. And she said: "You spoke of your Reverend Mother ... and I've heard words of legend and prophecy."
"It is said that a Bene Gesserit and her offspring hold the key to our future," he said.
"Do you believe I am that one."
She watched his face, thinking: The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings are times of such great peril.
"We do not know," he said.
She nodded, thinking: He's an honorable man. He wants a sign from me, but he'll not tip fate by telling me the sign.
Jessica turned her head, stared down into the basin at the golden shadows, the purple shadows, the vibrations of dust-mote air across the lip of their cave. Her mind was filled suddenly with feline prudence. She knew the cant of the Missionaria Protectiva, knew how to adapt the techniques of legend and fear and hope to her emergency needs, but she sensed wild changes here ... as though someone had been in among these Fremen and capitalized on the Missionaria Protectiva's imprint.
Stilgar cleared his throat.
She sensed his impatience, knew that the day moved ahead and men waited to seal off this opening. This was a time for boldness on her part, and she realized what she needed: some dar al-hikman, some school of translation that would give her....
"Adab," she whispered.
Her mind felt as though it had rolled over within her. She recognized the sensation with a quickening of pulse. Nothing in all the Bene Gesserit training carried such a signal of recognition. It could be only the adab, the demanding memory that comes upon you of itself. She gave herself up to it, allowing the words to flow from her.
"Ibn qirtaiba," she said,"as far as the spot where the dust ends." She stretched out an arm from her robe, seeing Stilgar's eyes go wide. She heard a rustling of many robes in the background. "I see a ... Fremen with the book of examples," she intoned. "He reads to al-Lat, the sun whom he defied and subjugated. He reads to the Sadus of the Trial and this is what he reads: "Mine enemies are like green blades eaten down
That did stand in the path of the tempest.
Hast thou not seen what our Lord did?
He sent the pestilence among them
That did lay schemes against us.
They are like birds scattered by the huntsman.
Their schemes are like pellets of poison
That every mouth rejects."
A trembling passed through her. She dropped her arm.
Back to her from the inner cave's shadows came a whispered response of many voices: "Their works have been overturned."
"The fire of God mount over thy heart," she said. And she thought: Now, it goes in the proper channel.
"The fire of God set alight," came the response.
She nodded. "Thine enemies shall fall," she said.
"Bi-la kaifa," they answered.
In the sudden hush, Stilgar bowed to her. "Sayyadina," he said. "If the Shai-hulud grant, then you may yet pass within to become a Reverend Mother."
Pass within, she thought. An odd way of putting it. But the rest of it fitted into the cant well enough. And she felt a cynical bitterness at what she had done. Our Missionaria Protectiva seldom fails. A place was prepared for us in this wilderness. The prayer of the salat has carved out our hiding place. Now ... I must play the part of Auliya, the Friend of God... Sayyadina to rogue peoples who've been so heavily imprinted with our Bene Gesserit soothsay they even call their chief priestesses Reverend Mothers.
Paul stood beside Chani in the shadows of the inner cave. He could still taste the morsel she had fed him--bird flesh and grain bound with spice honey and encased in a leaf. In tasting it he had realized he never before had eaten such a concentration of spice essence and there had been a moment of fear. He knew what this essence could do to him--the spice change that pushed his mind into prescient awareness.
"Bi-la kaifa," Chani whispered.
He looked at her, seeing the awe with which the Fremen appeared to accept his mother's words. Only the man called Jamis seemed to stand aloof from the ceremony, holding himself apart with arms folded across his breast.
"Duy yakha hin mange," Chani whispered. "Duy punra hin mange. I have two eyes. I have two feet."
And she stared at Paul with a look of wonder.
Paul took a deep breath, trying to still the tempest within him. His mother's words had locked onto the working of the spice essence, and he had felt her voice rise and fall within him like the shadows of an open fire. Through it all, he had sensed the edge of cynicism in her--he knew her so well!--but nothing could stop this thing that had begun with a morsel of food.
Terrible purpose!
He sensed it, the race consciousness that he could not escape. There was the sharpened clarity, the inflow of data, the cold precision of his awareness. He sank to the floor, sitting with his back against rock, giving himself up to it. Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future ... the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future--all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.
There was danger, he felt, of overrunning himself, and he had to hold onto his awareness of the present, sensing the blurred deflection of experience, the flowing moment, the continual solidification of that-which-is into the perpetual-was.
In grasping the present, he felt for the first time the massive steadiness of time's movement everywhere complicated by shifting currents, waves, surges, and countersurges, like surf against rocky cliffs. It gave him a new understanding of his prescience, and he saw the source of blind time, the source of error in it, with an immediate sensation of fear.
The prescience, he realized, was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed--at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw.
And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action--the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand--moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. He saw violence with the outcome subject to so many variables that his slightest movement created vast shiftings in the pattern.
The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences.
The countless consequences--lines fanned out from this cave, and along most of these consequence-lines he saw his own dead body with blood flowing from a gaping knife wound.
My father, the Padishah Emperor, was 72 yet looked no more than 35 the year he encompassed the death of Duke Leto and gave Arrakis back to the Harkonnens. He seldom appeared in public wearing other than a Sardaukar uniform and a Burseg's black helmet with the Imperial lion in gold upon its crest. The uniform was an open reminder of where his power lay. He was not always that blatant, though. When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage. You must remember that he was an emperor, father-head of a dynasty that reached back into the dimme
st history. But we denied him a legal son. Was this not the most terrible defeat a ruler ever suffered? My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered.
--"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
JESSICA AWAKENED in cave darkness, sensing the stir of Fremen around her, smelling the acrid stillsuit odor. Her inner timesense told her it would soon be night outside, but the cave remained in blackness, shielded from the desert by the plastic hoods that trapped their body moisture within this space.
She realized that she had permitted herself the utterly relaxing sleep of great fatigue, and this suggested something of her own unconscious assessment on personal security within Stilgar's troop. She turned in the hammock that had been fashioned of her robe, slipped her feet to the rock floor and into her desert boots.
I must remember to fasten the boots slip-fashion to help my stillsuit's pumping action, she thought. There are so many things to remember.
She could still taste their morning meal--the morsel of bird flesh and grain bound within a leaf with spice honey--and it came to her that the use of time was turned around here: night was the day of activity and day was the time of rest.
Night conceals; night is safest.
She unhooked her robe from its hammock pegs in a rock alcove, fumbled with the fabric in the dark until she found the top, slipped into it.
How to get a message out to the Bene Gesserit? she wondered. They would have to be told of the two strays in Arrakeen sanctuary.
Glowglobes came alight farther into the cave. She saw people moving there, Paul among them already dressed and with his hood thrown back to reveal the aquiline Atreides profile.
He had acted so strangely before they retired, she thought. Withdrawn. He was like one come back from the dead, not yet fully aware of his return, his eyes half shut and glassy with the inward stare. It made her think of his warning about the spice-impregnated diet: addictive.
Are there side effects? she wondered. He said it had something to do with his prescient faculty, but he has been strangely silent about what he sees.
Stilgar came from shadows to her right, crossed to the group beneath the glowglobes. She marked how he fingered his beard and the watchful, cat-stalking look of him.
Abrupt fear shot through Jessica as her senses awakened to the tensions visible in the people gathered around Paul--the stiff movements, the ritual positions.
"They have my countenance!" Stilgar rumbled.
Jessica recognized the man Stilgar confronted--Jamis! She saw then the rage in Jamis--the tight set of his shoulders.
Jamis, the man Paul bested! she thought.
"You know the rule, Stilgar," Jamis said.
"Who knows it better?" Stilgar asked, and she heard the tone of placation in his voice, the attempt to smooth something over.
"I choose the combat," Jamis growled.
Jessica sped across the cave, grasped Stilgar's arm. "What is this?" she asked.
"It is the amtal rule," Stilgar said. "Jamis is demanding the right to test your part in the legend."
"She must be championed," Jamis said. "If her champion wins, that's the truth in it. But it's said...." He glanced across the press of people. "... that she'd need no champion from the Fremen--which can mean only that she brings her own champion."
He's talking of single combat with Paul! Jessica thought.
She released Stilgar's arm, took a half-step forward. "I'm always my own champion," she said. "The meaning's simple enough for...."
"You'll not tell us our ways!" Jamis snapped. "Not without more proof than I've seen. Stilgar could've told you what to say last morning. He could've filled your mind full of the coddle and you could've bird-talked it to us, hoping to make a false way among us."
I can take him, Jessica thought, but that might conflict with the way they interpret the legend. And again she wondered at the way the Missionaria Protectiva's work had been twisted on this planet.
Stilgar looked at Jessica, spoke in a low voice but one designed to carry to the crowd's fringe. "Jamis is one to hold a grudge, Sayyadina. Your son bested him and--"
"It was an accident!" Jamis roared. "There was witch-force at Tuono Basin and I'll prove it now!"
"... and I've bested him myself," Stilgar continued. "He seeks by this tahaddi challenge to get back at me as well. There's too much of violence in Jamis for him ever to make a good leader--too much ghafla, the distraction. He gives his mouth to the rules and his heart to the sarfa, the turning away. No, he could never make a good leader. I've preserved him this long because he's useful in a fight as such, but when he gets this carving anger on him he's dangerous to his own society."
"Stilgar-r-r-r!" Jamis rumbled.
And Jessica saw what Stilgar was doing, trying to enrage Jamis, to take the challenge away from Paul.
Stilgar faced Jamis, and again Jessica heard the soothing in the rumbling voice. "Jamis, he's but a boy. He's--"
"You named him a man," Jamis said. "His mother says he's been through the gom jabbar. He's full-fleshed and with a surfeit of water. The ones who carried their pack say there's literjons of water in it. Literjons! And us sipping our catchpockets the instant they show dew-sparkle."
Stilgar glanced at Jessica. "Is this true? Is there water in your pack?"
"Yes."
"Literjons of it?"
"Two literjons."
"What was intended with this wealth?"
Wealth? she thought. She shook her head, feeling the coldness in his voice.
"Where I was born, water fell from the sky and ran over the land in wide rivers," she said. "There were oceans of it so broad you could not see the other shore. I've not been trained to your water discipline. I never before had to think of it this way."
A sighing gasp arose from the people around them: "Water fell from the sky ... it ran over the land."
"Did you know there're those among us who've lost from their catchpockets by accident and will be in sore trouble before we reach Tabr this night?"
"How could I know?" Jessica shook her head. "If they're in need, give them water from our pack."
"Is that what you intended with this wealth?"
"I intended it to save life," she said.
"Then we accept your blessing, Sayyadina."
"You'll not buy us off with water," Jamis growled. "Nor will you anger me against yourself, Stilgar. I see you trying to make me call you out before I've proved my words."
Stilgar faced Jamis. "Are you determined to press this fight against a child, Jamis?" His voice was low, venomous.
"She must be championed."
"Even though she has my countenance?"
"I invoke the amtal rule," Jamis said. "It's my right."
Stilgar nodded. "Then, if the boy does not carve you down, you'll answer to my knife afterward. And this time I'll not hold back the blade as I've done before."
"You cannot do this thing," Jessica said. "Paul's just--"
"You must not interfere, Sayyadina," Stilgar said. "Oh, I know you can take me and, therefore, can take anyone among us, but you cannot best us all united. This must be; it is the amtal rule."
Jessica fell silent, staring at him in the green light of the glowglobes, seeing the demoniacal stiffness that had taken over his expression. She shifted her attention to Jamis, saw the brooding look to his brows and thought: I should've seen that before. He broods. He's the silent kind, one who works himself up inside. I should've been prepared.
"If you harm my son," she said, "You'll have me to meet. I call you out now. I'll carve you into a joint of--"
"Mother." Paul stepped forward, touched her sleeve. "Perhaps if I explain to Jamis how--"
"Explain!" Jamis sneered.
Paul fell silent, staring at the man. He felt no fear of him. Jamis appeared clumsy in his movements and he had fallen so easily in their night encounter on the sand. But Paul still felt the nexus-boiling of this cave, still re
membered the prescient visions of himself dead under a knife. There had been so few avenues of escape for him in that vision....
Stilgar said: "Sayyadina, you must step back now where--"
"Stop calling her Sayyadina!" Jamis said. "That's yet to be proved. So she knows the prayer! What's that? Every child among us knows it."
He has talked enough, Jessica thought. I've the key to him. I could immobilize him with a word. She hesitated. But I cannot stop them all.
"You will answer to me then," Jessica said, and she pitched her voice in a twisting tone with a little whine in it and a catch at the end.
Jamis stared at her, fright visible on his face.
"I'll teach you agony," she said in the same tone. "Remember that as you fight. You'll have agony such as will make the gom jabbar a happy memory by comparison. You will writhe with your entire--"
"She tries a spell on me!" Jamis gasped. He put his clenched right fist beside his ear. "I invoke the silence on her!"
"So be it then," Stilgar said. He cast a warning glance at Jessica. "If you speak again, Sayyadina, we'll know it's your witchcraft and you'll be forfeit." He nodded for her to step back.
Jessica felt hands pulling her, helping her back, and she sensed they were not unkindly. She saw Paul being separated from the throng, the elfin-faced Chani whispering in his ear as she nodded toward Jamis.
A ring formed within the troop. More glowglobes were brought and all of them tuned to the yellow band.
Jamis stepped into the ring, slipped out of his robe and tossed it to someone in the crowd. He stood there in a cloudy gray slickness of stillsuit that was patched and marked by tucks and gathers. For a moment, he bent with his mouth to his shoulder, drinking from a catchpocket tube. Presently he straightened, peeled off and detached the suit, handed it carefully into the crowd. He stood waiting, clad in loin-cloth and some tight fabric over his feet, a crysknife in his right hand.
Jessica saw the girl-child Chani helping Paul, saw her press a crysknife handle into his palm, saw him heft it, testing the weight and balance. And it came to Jessica that Paul had been trained in prana and bindu, the nerve and the fiber--that he had been taught fighting in a deadly school, his teachers men like Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, men who were legends in their own lifetimes. The boy knew the devious ways of the Bene Gesserit and he looked supple and confident.