And the thought of coincidence never entered their minds.
Has Paul passed his test on the sand? Jessica asked herself. He’s capable, but accident can strike down even the most capable.
The waiting.
It’s the dreariness, she thought. You can wait just so long. Then the dreariness of the waiting overcomes you.
There was all manner of waiting in their lives.
More than two years we’ve been here, she thought, and twice that number at least to go before we can even hope to think of trying to wrest Arrakis from the Harkonnen governor, the Mudir Nahya, the Beast Rabban.
“Reverend Mother?”
The voice from outside the hangings at her door was that of Harah, the other woman in Paul’s menage.
“Yes, Harah.”
The hangings parted and Harah seemed to glide through them. She wore sietch sandals, a red-yellow wraparound that exposed her arms almost to the shoulders. Her black hair was parted in the middle and swept back like the wings of an insect, flat and oily against her head. The jutting, predatory features were drawn into an intense frown.
Behind Harah came Alia, a girl-child of about two years.
Seeing her daughter, Jessica was caught as she frequently was by Alia’s resemblance to Paul at that age—the same wide-eyed solemnity to her questing look, the dark hair and firmness of mouth. But there were subtle differences, too, and it was in these that most adults found Alia disquieting. The child—little more than a toddler—carried herself with a calmness and awareness beyond her years. Adults were shocked to find her laughing at a subtle play of words between the sexes. Or they’d catch themselves listening to her half-lisping voice, still blurred as it was by an unformed soft palate, and discover in her words sly remarks that could only be based on experiences no two-year-old had ever encountered.
Harah sank to a cushion with an exasperated sigh, frowned at the child.
“Alia.” Jessica motioned to her daughter.
The child crossed to a cushion beside her mother, sank to it and clasped her mother’s hand. The contact of flesh restored that mutual awareness they had shared since before Alia’s birth. It wasn’t a matter of shared thoughts—although there were bursts of that if they touched while Jessica was changing the spice poison for a ceremony. It was something larger, an immediate awareness of another living spark, a sharp and poignant thing, a nerve-sympatico that made them emotionally one.
In the formal manner that befitted a member of her son’s household, Jessica said: “Subakh ul kuhar, Harah. This night finds you well?”
With the same traditional formality, she said: “Subakh un nar. I am well.” The words were almost toneless. Again, she sighed.
Jessica sensed amusement from Alia.
“My brother’s ghanima is annoyed with me,” Alia said in her half-lisp.
Jessica marked the term Alia used to refer to Harah—ghanima. In the subtleties of the Fremen tongue, the word meant “something acquired in battle” and with the added overtone that the something no longer was used for its original purpose. An ornament, a spearhead used as a curtain weight.
Harah scowled at the child. “Don’t try to insult me, child. I know my place.”
“What have you done this time, Alia?” Jessica asked.
Harah answered: “Not only has she refused to play with the other children today, but she intruded where ….”
“I hid behind the hangings and watched Subiay’s child being born,” Alia said. “It’s a boy. He cried and cried. What a set of lungs! When he’d cried long enough—”
“She came out and touched him,” Harah said, “and he stopped crying. Everyone knows a Fremen baby must get his crying done at birth, if he’s in sietch because he can never cry again lest he betray us on hajr.”
“He’d cried enough,” Alia said. “I just wanted to feel his spark, his life. That’s all. And when he felt me he didn’t want to cry anymore.”
“It’s just made more talk among the people,” Harah said.
“Subiay’s boy is healthy?” Jessica asked. She saw that something was troubling Harah deeply and wondered at it.
“Healthy as any mother could ask,” Harah said. “They know Alia didn’t hurt him. They didn’t so much mind her touching him. He settled down right away and was happy. I was ….” Harah shrugged.
“It’s the strangeness of my daughter, is that it?” Jessica asked. “It’s the way she speaks of things beyond her years and of things no child her age could know—things of the past.”
“How could she know what a child looked like on Bela Tegeuse?” Harah demanded.
“But he does!” Alia said, “Subiay’s boy looks just like the son of Mitha born before the parting.”
“Alia!” Jessica said. “I warned you.”
“But, Mother, I saw it and it was true and ….”
Jessica shook her head, seeing the signs of disturbance in Harah’s face. What have I borne? Jessica asked herself. A daughter who knew at birth everything that I knew … and more: everything revealed to her out of the corridors of the past by the Reverend Mothers within me.
“It’s not just the things she says,” Harah said. “It’s the exercises, too: the way she sits and stares at a rock, moving only one muscle beside her nose, or a muscle on the back of a finger, or—”
“Those are the Bene Gesserit training,” Jessica said. “You know that, Harah. Would you deny my daughter her inheritance?”
“Reverend Mother, you know these things don’t matter to me,” Harah said. “It’s the people and the way they mutter. I feel danger in it. They say your daughter’s a demon, that other children refuse to play with her, that she’s—”
“She has so little in common with the other children,” Jessica said. “She’s no demon. It’s just the—”
“Of course she’s not!”
Jessica found herself surprised at the vehemence in Harah’s tone, glanced down at Alia. The child appeared lost in thought, radiating a sense of … waiting. Jessica returned her attention to Harah.
“I respect the fact that you’re a member of my son’s household,” Jessica said. (Alia stirred against her hand.) “You may speak openly with me of whatever’s troubling you.”
“I will not be a member of your son’s household much longer,” Harah said. “I’ve waited this long for the sake of my sons, the special training they receive as the children of Usul. It’s little enough I could give them since it’s known I don’t share your son’s bed.”
Again Alia stirred beside her, half-sleeping, warm.
“You’d have made a good companion for my son, though,” Jessica said. And she added to herself because such thoughts were ever with her: Companion … not a wife. Jessica’s thoughts went then straight to the center, to the pang that came from the common talk in the sietch that her son’s companionship with Chani had become a permanent thing, the marriage.
I love Chani, Jessica thought, but she reminded herself that love might have to step aside for royal necessity. Royal marriages had other reasons than love.
“You think I don’t know what you plan for your son?” Harah asked.
“What do you mean?” Jessica demanded.
“You plan to unite the tribes under Him,” Harah said.
“Is that bad?”
“I see danger for him … and Alia is part of that danger.”
Alia nestled closer to her mother, eyes opened now and studying Harah.
“I’ve watched you two together,” Harah said, “the way you touch. And Alia is like my own flesh because she’s sister to one who is like my brother. I’ve watched over her and guarded her from the time she was a mere baby, from the time of the razzia when we fled here. I’ve seen many things about her.”
Jessica nodded, feeling disquiet begin to grow in Alia beside her.
“You know what I mean,” Harah said. “The way she knew from the first what we were saying to her. When has there been another baby who knew the water discipline so young? What
other baby’s first words to her nurse were: ‘I love you, Harah’?”
Harah stared at Alia. “Why do you think I accept her insults? I know there’s no malice in them.”
Alia looked up at her mother.
“Yes, I have reasoning powers, Reverend Mother,” Harah said. “I could have been of the Sayyadina. I have seen what I have seen.”
“Harah….” Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.” And she felt surprise at herself, because this literally was true.
Alia straightened, squared her shoulders. Jessica felt the sense of waiting ended, an emotion compounded of decision and sadness.
“We made a mistake,” Alia said. “Now we need Harah.”
“It was the ceremony of the seed,” Harah said, “when you changed the Water of Life, Reverend Mother, when Alia was yet unborn within you.”
Need Harah? Jessica asked herself.
“Who else can talk among the people and make them begin to understand me?” Alia asked.
“What would you have her do?” Jessica asked.
“She already knows what to do,” Alia said.
“I will tell them the truth,” Harah said. Her face seemed suddenly old and sad with its olive skin drawn into frown wrinkles, a witchery in the sharp features. “I will tell them that Alia only pretends to be a little girl, that she has never been a little girl.”
Alia shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks, and Jessica felt the wave of sadness from her daughter as though the emotion were her own.
“I know I’m a freak,” Alia whispered. The adult summation coming from the child mouth was like a bitter confirmation.
“You’re not a freak!” Harah snapped. “Who dared say you’re a freak?”
Again, Jessica marveled at the fierce note of protectiveness in Harah’s voice. Jessica saw then that Alia had judged correctly—they did need Harah. The tribe would understand Harah—both her words and her emotions—for it was obvious she loved Alia as though this were her own child.
“Who said it?” Harah repeated.
“Nobody.”
Alia used a corner of Jessica’s aba to wipe the tears from her face. She smoothed the robe where she had dampened and crumpled it.
“Then don’t you say it,” Harah ordered.
“Yes, Harah.”
“Now,” Harah said, “you may tell me what it was like so that I may tell the others. Tell me what it is that happened to you.”
Alia swallowed, looked up at her mother.
Jessica nodded.
“One day I woke up,” Alia said. “It was like waking from sleep except that I could not remember going to sleep. I was in a warm, dark place. And I was frightened.”
Listening to the half-lisping voice of her daughter, Jessica remembered that day in the big cavern.
“When I was frightened,” Alia said, “I tried to escape, but there was no way to escape. Then I saw a spark … but it wasn’t exactly like seeing it. The spark was just there with me and I felt the spark’s emotions … soothing me, comforting me, telling me that way that everything would be all right. That was my mother.”
Harah rubbed at her eyes, smiled reassuringly at Alia. Yet there was a look of wildness in the eyes of the Fremen woman, an intensity as though they, too, were trying to hear Alia’s words.
And Jessica thought: What do we really know of how such a one thinks … out of her unique experiences and training and ancestry?
“Just when I felt safe and reassured,” Alia said, “there was another spark with us … and everything was happening at once. The other spark was the old Reverend Mother. She was … trading lives with my mother … everything … and I was there with them, seeing it all … everything. And it was over, and I was them and all the others and myself … only it took me a long time to find myself again. There were so many others.”
“It was a cruel thing,” Jessica said. “No being should wake into consciousness thus. The wonder of it is you could accept all that happened to you.”
“I couldn’t do anything else!” Alia said. “I didn’t know how to reject or hide my consciousness … or shut it off … everything just happened … everything ….”
“We didn’t know,” Harah murmured. “When we gave your mother the Water to change, we didn’t know you existed within her.”
“Don’t be sad about it, Harah,” Alia said. “I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. After all, there’s cause for happiness here: I’m a Reverend Mother. The tribe has two Rev ….”
She broke off, tipping her head to listen.
Harah rocked back on her heels against the sitting cushion, stared at Alia, bringing her attention then up to Jessica’s face.
“Didn’t you suspect?” Jessica asked.
“Sh-h-h-h,” Alia said.
A distant rhythmic chanting came to them through the hangings that separated them from the sietch corridors. It grew louder, carrying distinct sounds now: “Ya!Ya! Yawm! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, wallah! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, Wallah!”
The chanters passed the outer entrance, and their voices boomed through to the inner apartments. Slowly the sound receded.
When the sound had dimmed sufficiently, Jessica began the ritual, the sadness in her voice: “It was Ramadhan and April on Bela Tegeuse.”
“My family sat in their pool courtyard,” Harah said, “in air bathed by the moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and baklawa and mugs of liban—all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens and in our flocks, there was peace … peace in all the land.”
“Life was full with happiness until the raiders came,” Alia said.
“Blood ran cold at the scream of friends,” Jessica said. And she felt the memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared.
“La, la, la, the women cried,” said Harah.
“The raiders came through the mushtamal, rushing at us with their knives dripping red from the lives of our men,” Jessica said.
Silence came over the three of them as it was in all the apartments of the sietch, the silence while they remembered and kept their grief thus fresh.
Presently, Harah uttered the ritual ending to the ceremony, giving the words a harshness that Jessica had never before heard in them.
“We will never forgive and we will never forget,” Harah said.
In the thoughtful quiet that followed her words, they heard a muttering of people, the swish of many robes. Jessica sensed someone standing beyond the hangings that shielded her chamber.
“Reverend Mother?”
A woman’s voice, and Jessica recognized it: the voice of Tharthar, one of Stilgar’s wives.
“What is it, Tharthar?”
“There is trouble, Reverend Mother.”
Jessica felt a constriction at her heart, an abrupt fear for Paul. “Paul …” she gasped.
Tharthar spread the hangings, stepped into the chamber. Jessica glimpsed a press of people in the outer room before the hangings fell. She looked up at Tharthar—a small, dark woman in a red-figured robe of black, the total blue of her eyes trained fixedly on Jessica, the nostrils of her tiny nose dilated to reveal the plug scars.
“What is it?” Jessica demanded.
“There is word from the sand,” Tharthar said. “Usul meets the maker for his test … it is today. The young men say he cannot fail, he will be a sandrider by nightfall. The young men are banding for a razzia. They will raid in the north and meet Usul there. They say they will raise the cry then. They say they will force him to call out Stilgar and assume command of the tribes.”
Gathering water, planting the dunes, changing their world slowly but surely—these are no longer enough, Jessica thought. The little raids, the certain raids—these are no longer enough now that Paul and I have trained them. They feel their power. They want to fight.
Tharthar shifted from one foot to the other, cleared her throat.
We k
now the need for cautious waiting, Jessica thought, but there’s the core of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do us. We lose our senses of purpose if the waiting’s prolonged.
“The young men say if Usul does not call out Stilgar, then he must be afraid,” Tharthar said.
She lowered her gaze.
“So that’s the way of it,” Jessica muttered. And she thought: Well I saw it coming. As did Stilgar.
Again, Tharthar cleared her throat. “Even my brother, Shoab, says it,” she said. “They will leave Usul no choice.”
Then it has come, Jessica thought. And Paul will have to handle it himself. The Reverend Mother dare not become involved in the succession.
Alia freed her hand from her mother’s, said: “I will go with Tharthar and listen to the young men. Perhaps there is a way.”
Jessica met Tharthar’s gaze, but spoke to Alia: “Go, then. And report to me as soon as you can.”
“We do not want this thing to happen, Reverend Mother,” Tharthar said.
“We do not want it,” Jessica agreed. “The tribe needs all its strength.” She glanced at Harah. “Will you go with them?”
Harah answered the unspoken part of the question: “Tharthar will allow no harm to befall Alia. She knows we will soon be wives together, she and I, to share the same man. We have talked, Tharthar and I.” Harah looked up at Tharthar, back to Jessica. “We have an understanding.”
Tharthar held out a hand for Alia, said: “We must hurry. The young men are leaving.”
They pressed through the hangings, the child’s hand in the small woman’s hand, but the child seemed to be leading.
“If Paul-Muad’Dib slays Stilgar, this will not serve the tribe,” Harah said. “Always before, it has been the way of succession, but times have changed.”
“Times have changed for you, as well,” Jessica said.
“You cannot think I doubt the outcome of such a battle,” Harah said. “Usul could not but win.”
“That was my meaning,” Jessica said.
“And you think my personal feelings enter into my judgment,” Harah said. She shook her head, her water rings tinkling at her neck. “How wrong you are. Perhaps you think, as well, that I regret not being the chosen of Usul, that I am jealous of Chani?”
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