Dune (58 page)

It was done in an instant, and he straightened, beckoned his handlers. “Bury this slave intact with his knife in his hands,” he said. “The man earned it.”

In the golden box, Count Fenring leaned close to the Baron, said: “A grand gesture, that—true bravura. Your nephew has style as well as courage.”

“He insults the crowd by refusing the head,” the Baron muttered.

“Not at all,” Lady Fenring said. She turned, looking up at the tiers around them.

And the Baron noted the line of her neck—a truly lovely flowing of muscles—like a young boy's.

“They like what your nephew did,” she said.

As the import of Feyd-Rautha's gesture penetrated to the most distant seats, as the people saw the handlers carrying off the dead gladiator intact, the Baron watched them and realized she had interpreted the reaction correctly. The people were going wild, beating on each other, screaming and stamping.

The Baron spoke wearily. “I shall have to order a fete. You cannot send people home like this, their energies unspent. They must see that I share their elation.” He gave a hand signal to his guard, and a servant above them dipped the Harkonnen orange pennant over the box—once, twice, three times—signal for a fete.

Feyd-Rautha crossed the arena to stand beneath the golden box, his weapons sheathed, arms hanging at his sides. Above the undiminished frenzy of the crowd, he called: “A fete, Uncle?”

The noise began to subside as people saw the conversation and waited.

“In your honor, Feyd!” the Baron called down. And again, he caused the pennant to be dipped in signal.

Across the arena, the pru-barriers had been dropped and young men were leaping down into the arena, racing toward Feyd-Rautha.

“You ordered the pru-shields dropped, Baron?” the Count asked.

“No one will harm the lad,” the Baron said. “He's a hero.”

The first of the charging mass reached Feyd-Rautha, lifted him on their shoulders, began parading around the arena.

“He could walk unarmed and unshielded through the poorest quarters of Harko tonight,” the Baron said. “They'd give him the last of their food and drink just for his company.”

The Baron pushed himself from his chair, settled his weight into his suspensors. “You will forgive me, please. There are matters that require my immediate attention. The guard will see you to the keep.”

The Count arose, bowed. “Certainly, Baron. We're looking forward to the fete. I've ah-h-h-mm-m-m never seen a Harkonnen fete.”

“Yes,” the Baron said. “The fete.” He turned, was enveloped by guards as he stepped into the private exit from the box.

A guard captain bowed to Count Fenring. “Your orders, my Lord?”

“We will ah-h-h wait for the worst mm-m-m crush to um-m-m pass,” the Count said.

“Yes, m'Lord.” The man bowed himself back three paces.

Count Fenring faced his lady, spoke again in their personal humming-code tongue: “You saw it, of course?”

In the same humming tongue, she said: “The lad knew the gladiator wouldn't be drugged. There was a moment of fear, yes, but no surprise.”

“It was planned,” he said. “The entire performance.”

“Without a doubt.”

“It stinks of Hawat.”

“Indeed,” she said.

“I demanded earlier that the Baron eliminate Hawat.”

“That was an error, my dear.”

“I see that now.”

“The Harkonnens may have a new Baron ere long.”

“If that's Hawat's plan.”

“That will bear examination, true,” she said.

“The young one will be more amenable to control.”

“For us . . . after tonight,” she said.

“You don't anticipate difficulty seducing him, my little brood-mother?”

“No, my love. You saw how he looked at me.”

“Yes, and I can see now why we must have that bloodline.”

“Indeed, and it's obvious we must have a hold on him. I'll plant deep in his deepest self the necessary prana-bindu phrases to bend him.”

“We'll leave as soon as possible—as soon as you're sure,” he said.

She shuddered. “By all means. I should not want to bear a child in this terrible place.”

“The things we do in the name of humanity,” he said.

“Yours is the easy part,” she said.

“There
are
some ancient prejudices I overcome,” he said. “They're quite primordial, you know.”

“My poor dear,” she said, and patted his cheek. “You know this is the only way to be sure of saving that bloodline.”

He spoke in a dry voice: “I quite understand what we do.”

“We won't fail,” she said.

“Guilt starts as a feeling of failure,” he reminded.

“There'll be no guilt,” she said. “Hypno-ligation of that Feyd-Rautha's psyche and his child in my womb—then we go.”

“That uncle,” he said. “Have you ever seen such distortion?”

“He's pretty fierce,” she said, “but the nephew could well grow to be worse.”

“Thanks to that uncle. You know, when you think what this lad could've been with some other upbringing—with the Atreides code to guide him, for example.”

“It's sad,” she said.

“Would that we could've saved both the Atreides youth and this one. From what I heard of that young Paul—a most admirable lad, good union of breeding and training.” He shook his head. “But we shouldn't waste sorrow over the aristocracy of misfortune.”

“There's a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said.

“You have sayings for everything!” he protested.

“You'll like this one,” she said. “It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you've seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.' ”

 

STILGAR'S TROOP returning to the sietch with its two strays from the desert climbed out of the basin in the waning light of the first moon. The robed figures hurried with the smell of home in their nostrils. Dawn's gray line behind them was brightest at the notch in their horizon-calendar that marked the middle of autumn, the month of Caprock.

Wind-raked dead leaves strewed the cliffbase where the sietch children had been gathering them, but the sounds of the troop's passage (except for occasional blunderings by Paul and his mother) could not be distinguished from the natural sounds of the night.

Paul wiped sweat-caked dust from his forehead, felt a tug at his arm, heard Chani's voice hissing. “Do as I told you: bring the fold of your hood down over your forehead! Leave only the eyes exposed. You waste moisture.”

A whispered command behind them demanded silence: “The desert hears you!”

A bird chirruped from the rocks high above them.

The troop stopped, and Paul sensed abrupt tension.

There came a faint thumping from the rocks, a sound no louder than mice jumping in the sand.

Again, the bird chirruped.

A stir passed through the troop's ranks. And again, the mouse-thumping pecked its way across the sand.

Once more, the bird chirruped.

The troop resumed its climb up into a crack in the rocks, but there was a stillness of breath about the Fremen now that filled Paul with caution, and he noted covert glances toward Chani, the way she seemed to withdraw, pulling in upon herself.

There was rock underfoot now, a faint gray swishing of robes around them, and Paul sensed a relaxing of discipline, but still that quiet-of-the-person about Chani and the others. He followed a shadow shape—up steps, a turn, more steps, into a tunnel, past two moisture-sealed doors and into a globelighted narrow passage with yellow rock walls and ceiling.

All around him, Paul saw the Fremen throwing back their hoods, removing nose plugs, breathing deeply. Someone sighed. Paul looked for Chani, found that she had left his side. He was hemmed in by a press of robed bodies. Someone jostled him, said, “Excuse me, Usul. What a crush! It's always this way.”

On his left, the narrow bearded face of the one called Farok turned toward Paul. The stained eyepits and blue darkness of eyes appeared even darker under the yellow globes. “Throw off your hood, Usul,” Farok said. “You're home.” And he helped Paul, releasing the hood catch, elbowing a space around them.

Paul slipped out his nose plugs, swung the mouth baffle aside. The odor of the place assailed him: unwashed bodies, distillate esthers of reclaimed wastes, everywhere the sour effluvia of humanity with, over it all, a turbulence of spice and spicelike harmonics.

“Why are we waiting, Farok?” Paul asked.

“For the Reverend Mother, I think. You heard the message—poor Chani.”

Poor Chani?
Paul asked himself. He looked around, wondering where she was, where his mother had got to in all this crush.

Farok took a deep breath. “The smells of home,” he said.

Paul saw that the man was enjoying the stink of this air, that there was no irony in his tone. He heard his mother cough then, and her voice came back to him through the press of the troop: “How rich the odors of your sietch, Stilgar. I see you do much working with the spice . . . you make paper . . . plastics . . . and isn't that chemical explosives?”

“You know this from what you smell?” It was another man's voice.

And Paul realized she was speaking for his benefit that she wanted him to make a quick acceptance of this assault on his nostrils.

There came a buzz of activity at the head of the troop and a prolonged indrawn breath that seemed to pass through the Fremen, and Paul heard hushed voices back down the line: “It's true then—Liet is dead.”

Liet
, Paul thought. Then:
Chani, daughter of Liet.
The pieces fell together in his mind. Liet was the Fremen name of the planetologist.

Paul looked at Farok, asked: “Is it the Liet known as Kynes?”

“There is only one Liet,” Farok said.

Paul turned, stared at the robed back of a Fremen in front of him.
Then Liet-Kynes is dead,
he thought.

“It was Harkonnen treachery,” someone hissed. “They made it seem an accident . . . lost in the desert . . . a 'thopter crash. . . .”

Paul felt a burst of anger. The man who had befriended them, helped save them from the Harkonnen hunters, the man who had sent his Fremen cohorts searching for two strays in the desert . . . another victim of the Harkonnens.

“Does Usul hunger yet for revenge?” Farok asked.

Before Paul could answer, there came a low call and the troop swept forward into a wider chamber, carrying Paul with them. He found himself in an open space confronted by Stilgar and a strange woman wearing a flowing wraparound garment of brilliant orange and green. Her arms were bare to the shoulders, and he could see she wore no stillsuit. Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose between the dense darkness of her eyes.

She turned toward him, and Paul saw golden rings threaded with water tallies dangling from her ears.

“This
bested my Jamis?” she demanded.

“Be silent, Harah,” Stilgar said. “It was Jamis' doing—
he
invoked the tahaddi al-burhan.”

“He's not but a boy!” she said. She gave her head a sharp shake from side to side, setting the water tallies to jingling. “My children made fatherless by another child? Surely, 'twas an accident!”

“Usul, how many years have you?” Stilgar asked.

“Fifteen standard,” Paul said.

Stilgar swept his eyes over the troop. “Is there one among you cares to challenge me?”

Silence.

Stilgar looked at the woman. “Until I've learned his weirding ways, I'd not challenge him.”

She returned his stare. “But—”

“You saw the stranger woman who went with Chani to the Reverend Mother?” Stilgar asked. “She's an out-freyn Sayyadina, mother to this lad. The mother and son are masters of the weirding ways of battle.”

“Lisan al-Gaib,” the woman whispered. Her eyes held awe as she turned them back toward Paul.

The legend again,
Paul thought.

“Perhaps,” Stilgar said. “It hasn't been tested, though.” He returned his attention to Paul. “Usul, it's our way that you've now the responsibility for Jamis' woman here and for his two sons. His yali . . . his quarters, are yours. His coffee service is yours . . . and this, his woman.”

Paul studied the woman, wondering:
Why isn't she mourning her man? Why does she show no hate for me?
Abruptly, he saw that the Fremen were staring at him, waiting.

Someone whispered: “There's work to do. Say how you accept her.”

Stilgar said: “Do you accept Harah as woman or servant?”

Harah lifted her arms, turning slowly on one heel. “I am still young, Usul. It's said I still look as young as when I was with Geoff . . . before Jamis bested him.”