Paul of Dune hod-1
Page 50
Count Fenring had already acted, moving through the blinding smoke to reach the thick stone wall of the banquet room, where blocks fitted together perfectly to form a corner that, to even the most detailed inspection, appeared to be perfectly aligned. He knew the precise crack to push, the slight sliding to the left and then upward to reveal another mechanism — all the components of which were made of exactly the same kind of stone. Then a release, and the passage opened: access to the ancient tunnels underneath the Residency.
Many years before the Atreides occupation, Count Fenring had discovered the network of incalculably old passages beneath the foundations, and he had installed several access points in key areas. Because the system was his own clever design, Fenring knew these hidden entrances would have remained undetected in all the subsequent time.
Now, it would provide a perfect way for them to get away after the murder of Muad’Dib, leaving Arrakeen in an uproar. According to the plan he and Lady Margot had developed so carefully, an armed escape craft was already waiting outside, and from there they would reach the Heighliner and fold space to freedom.
The right people had been bribed, the entire process made easier by the fact that the Emperor Muad’Dib was so widely hated, even by many of those closest to him. The assistance of the Spacing Guild didn’t hurt, either. In all likelihood, the Count, Margot, and Marie would fill the power vacuum after Paul’s death, or find someone compatible who could do so. Even if not, without such a charismatic, prescient leader, the Jihad and this fanatical government would consume itself from within.
But first, Muad’Dib had to die.
When Marie threw herself upon Paul, however, surprise and treachery had been her main advantages. As Paul stalled the initial attack for a moment, Alia burst out from beneath the table and sprang at the other girl like a mongoose.
Breaking free of Paul, Marie lashed out at Alia with the needle-whip, and Paul’s sister danced back. Alia was more than a match for the other girl’s fighting ability, but she had no weapon of her own. Marie jabbed, and the hair-fine rapier made a whistling sigh through the air. “Let’s play, Alia.”
Though her muscles could barely respond from her exposure to the paralytic, Irulan crawled to one side, out of the way. Stilgar lay sprawled with his head, shoulders, and arms on the table, where he had collapsed. He twitched and struggled, his eyes fully aware, as he tried to pull himself up. Chani held her drawn crysknife, looking as formidable a fighter as any Fedaykin.
Alia sprang onto the dining table, trying to get out of reach of the needlewhip. Marie lashed and spun as she followed her up there, knocking settings aside while Alia dodged. It was clear the little Fenring assassin meant to dispatch her quickly. So much had happened in only a few seconds. “Now who is the scorpion?” Marie laughed.
Alia took another step across the tabletop and kicked a plate with a half-eaten fish carcass at Marie. The girl ducked to one side, her hard gaze never wavering. Alia spotted the Emperor’s ornate knife near her brother’s plate. In a blur of motion, she grabbed the blade and jumped toward her opponent, slashing beneath the needlewhip, catching the girl on the wrist, severing tendons. “I can sting, too.”
Marie’s hand instantly became useless, and the deadly weapon dangled from the loops wrapped about her knuckles. With no more than a hiss of pain, Marie jumped off the table and pounced on the half-paralyzed Irulan, choosing any victim she could find.
But Alia was unleashed now. The voices in Other Memory howled at her like a bloodthirsty mob. She raised the jewel-handled knife and slammed it into the back of the little girl. The blow was true, and the Emperor’s sharp blade pierced Marie’s heart.
“Marie!” Fenring cried, turning away from his exit tunnel and bounding forward. “No, not my daughter!”
Alia stood up, leaving the Emperor’s blade firmly planted within the twitching body of the treacherous girl. “You were never my friend.”
Korba looked on in awe, still seated where he had slumped helplessly back into his chair, and just starting to recover from the paralytic gas. As far as Alia could tell, the Fremen had not lifted a finger during the brief but intense battle. “The knife,” he said in a slurred voice, his lips moving slightly. “St. Alia of the Knife.”
Caught in the swirl of events around her, Alia realized that she stood at the threshold of her own legend.
13
Who can love a monster? It is an easy thing when one allows love to interfere with reason.
—Bene Gesserit report on Abomination
Paul switched off his shield and strode over to the fallen body of Marie Fenring. Alia stared at the jewel-hiked knife protruding from her former playmate’s back, as if she could not believe what she had just done.
Chani stood with crysknife in hand, coiled for further violence and ready to protect Paul. “Stilgar, do you live?” she called.
Though he moved like a man half asleep, the naib said, “I live… The poison was temporary.”
Count Fenring had fallen to the floor on his knees and looked absolutely shattered. “Marie! Marie, my sweet little girl!” His shoulders hunched and shuddered as he lifted the dead child and cradled her. Behind him, an opening in the wall led down a sloped ramp and worn stairs into the dark tunnels of a secret labyrinth underground. His wife knelt next to him, also stricken. Both of them seemed to have abandoned their dream of escape.
A backwash of danger clamored in Paul’s mind, but in his prescient blind spot he could sense no details. Though he had always known the Count was devious, he had wanted to believe that he shared a bond with the other potential Kwisatz Haderach.
All along, though, Fenring’s deadly plot had been ticking like clockwork. He must have known it was a risky attempt, yet he had been willing to send his own daughter behind enemy lines and unleash her as a weapon, seeking to destroy not only Paul, but the Jihad. Had this man raised Marie from infancy with that sole purpose in mind? What kind of father could do that? He realized how Duke Leto might have reacted if the Harkonnens had actually killed Paul.
Lady Margot was white and rigid, as if she had discarded any attempt to maintain Bene Gesserit control over her emotions. Paul saw the agonized sorrow of a mother, but most of all he felt the sheer misery of Count Fenring. Raw, authentic emotion boiled up from him like a hot cloud.
Paul said, “You used a child as a pawn in an assassination plot. Your own child!”
“Oh, Hasimir is not her father, Paul Atreides.” Lady Margot’s voice dripped with scorn. “You knew her father. Feyd’Rautha Harkonnen.” Paul snapped his gaze to her in surprise.
In that instant, Count Fenring moved like a coiled viper, his muscles trained and retrained with years of practice as the Emperor’s most reliable assassin. Fenring yanked the Emperor’s dagger out of Marie’s body and drove the blade deep into Paul’s chest.
“One of my backup plans,” he said.
Reeling backward, Paul experienced every moment splintered into a million shards of nanoseconds. Each event had been as carefully laid out as the puzzle pieces in a Chusuk mosaic. Either the plan had originally been designed in extravagant and impossible detail, or Fenring had enhanced the scheme with so many branch points and alternatives that all possibilities had intersected in this single crux point.
The knife wound created a yawning gulf of pain in Paul’s chest. He heard a shrill wail from Chani. “Uuuussssuuuullll!”
She cried out again, but this time it was barely audible, a galaxy away.
Bleeding, Paul-Muad’Dib fell, as if tumbling into a vast chasm.
14
My Sihaya is the water of my life and the reason my heart beats. My love for her anchors me against the storms of history.
—PAUL-MUAD’DIB, private love poem to Chani
In the uproar that ensued, the room reverberated with shouts and barked orders. Count Fenring sprang away from Paul even as he fell. Still holding the Emperor’s knife, the assassin activated his shield and retreated to a corner, trying to reach the
open passageway, but Fedaykin had already blocked it. Thwarted, he stood with his back to the stone blocks, prepared to defend himself. Margot Fenring joined her husband, also ready to die. Though she had no obvious weapon, she was a Bene Gesserit, and skilled in killing as well.
The horrified and enraged guards pressed close, a barely recovered Stilgar beside them, while Korba still struggled to pick himself up.
“Take him alive!” Irulan cried, her voice quavering as she tried to assert authority. She inhaled deeply, forcing control on her stunned muscles. “If you kill him, we will never know what other schemes he may have put in place! Do not make the mistake of believing this is the only plan afoot.”
Stilgar did not need to be given orders by the Princess. “We will not kill him — at least not now, and not swiftly.” Then his voice became a growl. “After the execution of Whitmore Bludd, the mob has a taste for it. I would not deprive them of their satisfaction.”
“I look forward to your interrogation games, hmmm?” Fenring mocked. “Perhaps we shall share advice on techniques?” Inside his body shield, he passed the bloody dagger from hand to hand.
Chani felt numb. Noisome smoke still drifted through the room, and Paul lay on the floor, bleeding to death. Desperate to save him, she pressed her hands against the wound; blood seeped through her fingers, red and slick.
Paul Atreides may have been Fremen in many ways, but he did not have the genetic desert adaptations that thickened blood for rapid coagulation. “Send for medics! A battlefield surgeon! A Suk doctor! Quickly!”
Two guards rushed out into the hall. Stilgar and the other Fedaykin would not let the Count escape. With a sneer, Fenring said, “Perhaps you should tend to your Muad’Dib, hmmm? He may have final words for you.”
Chani needed to stop the hemorrhage. “Usul, Beloved, how can I help you? How can I give you strength?”
She clasped his hands and felt a faint flicker, a twitch of the fingers, as if he were trying to signal her. Maybe the doctors could heal him, if only they arrived in time. But if Paul died before they could get him into surgery…
He was fighting, struggling within himself. Chani knew he had learned many things about his body after discovering his true nature as the Kwisatz Haderach, but she doubted if he had the skill to deal with such a severe, obviously mortal wound.
Alia was beside her, but even with all of her Other Memories and unusual knowledge, the girl could not help. “My brother is on the brink of death,” she said in a peculiar tone of awe. “I should have saved him.”
“We could still save him if only we could slow the bleeding, if only we could stop time —” Suddenly Chani straightened. “Alia! Run to my quarters, in the sealed jar by the table at the window. As a Sayyadina of the Rite, I keep some sacred Water of Life. Bring it for Muad’Dib.”
Though surprised, Alia was already on her feet. “The trance — my brother’s trance. Yes, we must induce it now!” The girl ran off, as swiftly as the wind.
Chani remembered when Paul had foolishly tried to prove himself, not just to the Fremen men by becoming a wormrider, but also by doing what only the most powerful women had achieved. Believing himself to be the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul had taken the unaltered poison, the exhalation of a drowned worm. Only the tiniest amount.
“One drop of it,” Paul had said. “So small… just one drop.”
Even so, it had been enough to plunge him into a coma so deep that he’d lain like a corpse for weeks, in suspended animation. Finally, with the help of both Chani and Jessica he had broken through that impasse, and had emerged able to detect and convert poisons. But that sort of manipulation required great effort and conscious volition.
Alia came rushing back in. Clutching a plaz container, she squirmed past the two medics who were only now entering with emergency-response kits. Alia arrived first, dropping to her knees and extending the jar to Chani. When the Fremen woman unsealed the lid, the bitter alkaloid stench rose up, so powerful it stung her eyes. The Water of Life was perhaps the most potent of toxins known to humankind. But right now, it was what Muad’Dib needed.
Chani touched her finger to the liquid, withdrew a single drop, and gently brushed Paul’s pale lips in a loving gesture, a faint caress. She knew that if she gave him too much, his body would not be able to counteract the chemical; he would go into a deep coma and his valiant heart would stop beating.
After the kiss of the poison, she sensed a new rigidity in his body. The blood finally stopped flowing, but she couldn’t sense him breathing anymore. His eyelids no longer fluttered.
One of the Suk doctors nudged her aside. “Lady Chani, you must let us tend him. We are his only chance.”
The other smelled the poison. “What is that? Take it away! We have no use for Fremen folk medicines.”
The first doctor shook his head. “So much blood. He can’t possibly survive this.” They knelt, felt for a pulse, applied monitors and talked quietly between themselves. “We are too late. He no longer lives.”
There were moans from the guards, while Stilgar looked ready to explode. Irulan actually wept, causing Chani to wonder if the tears were false or real.
Seeking calmness within, Chani simply said to the doctors, “You are mistaken. Muad’Dib survives, but his life is below the threshold of your detection.” When he had undergone the same thing before, many Fremen had also believed him dead. “With the Water of Life, I bought you time. Work your medicine, patch the wound.”
“Lady Chani, there is no point —”
“Do as I command! His body already knows how to fight off the effects of the coma. Act quickly, before the window of opportunity closes.”
***
ON THE FLOOR of the dining hall the doctors set to work, calling for assistants, more surgical tools, even blood transfusions that would do little if Paul’s heart refused to pump.
Feeling helpless, angry, and vengeful, Irulan watched, an outsider as the pivotal events transpired around her. Chani, Alia, and Stilgar formed a cordon around the wounded Emperor, keeping her away. Irulan did not understand the mystic Fremen ritual Chani had applied, saving Paul by giving him poison, but she did not protest. It certainly could do no harm.
Irulan could not venture close to the Count and Lady Margot either, who by now faced a dozen murderous guards waiting for any excuse to attack. She doubted the couple would survive the next hour if Paul died, and if he died, she would not bother to protect them.
Using a delicate cellular sealant and tissue grafting applied with probes and surgical instruments that were far more precise than an Ixian needlewhip, they attempted to repair the grievous damage caused by the sharp blade.
Irulan did not know how long the silence and tension would last.
One of the Suk doctors mumbled, as though expecting no one would hear him, “This is work more suited for a mortician than a surgeon.” In nearly an hour they had seen not the faintest signs of life. Nevertheless, the doctors worked feverishly until it was clear they had done all they knew how to do.
It was up to Paul now.
At the sight of her husband suffering, Irulan felt stunned and despondent. Princess Irulan’s mother and all her Bene Gesserit instructors would have been surprised at her automatic reaction. She wondered where the cool and politically savvy schemer within her had gone.
For a frightened moment, she considered whether or not she actually felt a flicker of love for him. But that was not a sentiment she could share with anyone — probably not even with him, if he survived.
Her devotion to him was less appreciated than that of a pet. But love? She wasn’t sure.
Beyond her personal concerns, Irulan was shaken by the realization of the horrendous political turmoil that was sure to follow the death of Muad’Dib. With so many factions struggling for the throne — including, surely, her own father trying to reclaim his place — the galaxy would be ripped apart in yet another horrific civil war. When added to the damages of the continuing Jihad, could humanity survive?
And a third. The gaps between beats grew shorter and shorter, and finally the monitors showed a slow but steady pulse.
The Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib came back to life, still weak and barely holding on. Irulan felt fragile herself after the ordeal; her own heart thumped rapidly. This was Muad’Dib — of course he lived!
His eyes flickered open, and that was all Irulan needed to see. She wiped away her tears, and then they flowed anew. Tears of joy? Yes, she decided, and of anger that anyone had attempted this against her husband.
***
WHEN PAUL FINALLY sat up, his black tunic torn open and soaked with blood, Count Fenring switched off his personal shield and surrendered. His shoulders sagged, and he extended the bloodstained dagger, hilt first. “It appears I have nothing to gain by continued resistance, hmmm?”
Korba, now braver, grabbed the dagger out of Fenring’s hand. The guards rushed forward and seized both the Count and his Lady, binding them in shigawire and removing them from the banquet room. During the distraction of the arrest, Korba surreptitiously slipped the ornate Imperial knife up his own sleeve.
Irulan saw him do it, and knew there was no danger in it. She wondered where the well-traveled weapon would eventually wind up, if it would be stored as a holy relic somewhere or sold to a particularly devout (and wealthy) patron.
Paul insisted on getting to his feet. The doctors helped him, but he preferred to lean on Chani, placing his other hand on Alia’s shoulder. Irulan stood stiff-backed and gazed at him, content in the knowledge that he lived.