Children of Dune dc-3

by Frank Herbert

  —THE BOOK OF LETO AFTER HARQ AL-ADA

  Stilgar could not explain it, but he found Leto’s casual observation pro-foundly disturbing. It ground through his awareness all the way back across the sand to Sietch Tabr, taking precedence over everything else Leto had said out there on The Attendant.

  Indeed, the young women of Arrakis were very beautiful that year. And the young men, too. Their faces glowed serenely with water-richness. Their eyes looked outward and far. They exposed their features often without any pretense of stillsuit masks and the snaking lines of catchtubes. Frequently they did not even wear stillsuits in the open, prefering the new garments which, as they moved, offered flickering suggestions of the lithe young bodies beneath.

  Such human beauty was set off against the new beauty of the landscape. By contrast with the old Arrakis, the eye could be spellbound by its collision with a tiny clump of green twigs growing among red-brown rocks. And the old sietch warrens of the cave-metropolis culture, complete with elaborate seals and moisture traps at every entrance, were giving way to open villages built often of mud bricks. Mud bricks!

  Why did I want the village destroyed? Stilgar wondered, and he stumbled as he walked.

  He knew himself to be of a dying breed. Old Fremen gasped in wonder at the prodigality of their planet—water wasted into the air for no more than its ability to mold building bricks. The water for a single one-family dwelling would keep an entire sietch alive for a year.

  The new buildings even had transparent windows to let in the sun’s heat and to desiccate the bodies within. Such windows opened outward.

  New Fremen within their mud homes could look out upon their landscape. They no longer were enclosed and huddling in a sietch. Where the new vision moved, there also moved the imagination. Stilgar could feel this. The new vision joined Fremen to the rest of the Imperial universe, conditioned them to unbounded space. Once they’d been tied to water-poor Arrakis by their enslavement to its bitter necessities. They’d not shared that open-mindedness which conditioned inhabitants on most planets of the Imperium.

  Stilgar could see the changes contrasting with his own doubts and fears. In the old days it had been a rare Fremen who even considered the possibility that he might leave Arrakis to begin a new life on one of the water-rich worlds. They’d not even been permitted the dream of escape.

  He watched Leto’s moving back as the youth walked ahead. Leto had spoken of prohibitions against movement off-planet. Well, that had always been a reality for most other-worlders, even where the dream was permitted as a safety valve. But planetary serfdom had reached its peak here on Arrakis. Fremen had turned inward, barricaded in their minds as they were barricaded in their cave warrens.

  The very meaning of sietch—a place of sanctuary in times of trouble—had been perverted here into a monstrous confinement for an entire population.

  Leto spoke the truth: Muad’Dib had changed all that.

  Stilgar felt lost. He could feel his old beliefs crumbling. The new outward vision produced life which desired to move away from containment.

  “How beautiful the young women are this year.”

  The old ways (My ways! he admitted) had forced his people to ignore all history except that which turned inward onto their own travail. The old Fremen had read history out of their own terrible migrations, their flights from persecution into persecution. The old planetary government had followed the stated policy of the old Imperium. They had suppressed creativity and all sense of progress, of evolution. Prosperity had been dangerous to the old Imperium and its holders of power.

  With an abrupt shock, Stilgar realized that these things were equally dangerous to the course which Alia was setting.

  Again Stilgar stumbled and fell farther behind Leto.

  In the old ways and old religions, there’d been no future, only an endless now. Before Muad’Dib, Stilgar saw, the Fremen had been conditioned to believe in failure, never in the possibility of accomplishment. Well … they’d believed Liet-Kynes, but he’d set a forty-generation timescale. That was no accomplishment; that was a dream which, he saw now, had also turned inward.

  Muad’Dib had changed that!

  During the Jihad, Fremen had learned much about the old Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. The eighty-first Padishah of House Corrino to occupy the Golden Lion Throne and reign over this Imperium of uncounted worlds had used Arrakis as a testing place for those policies which he hoped to implement in the rest of his empire. His planetary governors on Arrakis had cultivated a persistent pessimism to bolster their power base. They’d made sure that everyone on Arrakis, even the free-roaming Fremen, became familiar with numerous cases of injustice and insoluble problems; they had been taught to think of themselves as a helpless people for whom there was no succor.

  “How beautiful the young women are this year!”

  As he watched Leto’s retreating back, Stilgar began to wonder how the youth had set these thoughts flowing—and just by uttering a seemingly simple statement. Because of that statement, Stilgar found himself viewing Alia and his own role on the Council in an entirely different way.

  Alia was fond of saying that old ways gave ground slowly. Stilgar admitted to himself that he’d always found this statement vaguely reassuring. Change was dangerous. Invention must be suppressed. Individual will-power must be denied. What other function did the priesthood serve than to deny individual will?

  Alia kept saying that opportunities for open competition had to be reduced to manageable limits. But that meant the recurrent threat of technology could only be used to confine populations—just as it had served its ancient masters. Any permitted technology had to be rooted in ritual. Otherwise … otherwise …

  Again Stilgar stumbled. He was at the qanat now and saw Leto waiting beneath the apricot orchard which grew along the flowing water. Stilgar heard his feet moving through uncut grass.

  Uncut grass!

  What can I believe? Stilgar asked himself.

  It was proper for a Fremen of his generation to believe that individuals needed a profound sense of their own limitations. Traditions were surely the most controlling element in a secure society. People had to know the boundaries of their time, of their society, of their territory. What was wrong with the sietch as a model for all thinking? A sense of enclosure should pervade every individual choice—should fence in the family, the community, and every step taken by a proper government.

  Stilgar came to a stop and stared across the orchard at Leto. The youth stood there, regarding him with a smile.

  Does he know the turmoil in my head? Stilgar wondered.

  And the old Fremen Naib tried to fall back on the traditional catechism of his people. Each aspect of life required a single form, its inherent circularity based on secret inner knowledge of what will work and what will not work. The model for life, for the community, for every element of the larger society right up to and beyond the peaks of government—that model had to be the sietch and its counterpart in the sand: Shai-Hulud. The giant sandworm was surely a most formidable creature, but when threatened it hid in the impenetrable deeps.

  Change is dangerous! Stilgar told himself. Sameness and stability were the proper goals of government.

  But the young men and women were beautiful.

  And they remembered the words of Muad’Dib as he deposed Shaddam IV: “It’s not long life to the Emperor that I seek; it’s long life to the Imperium.”

  Isn’t that what I’ve been saying to myself? Stilgar wondered.

  He resumed walking, headed toward the sietch entrance slightly to Leto’s right. The youth moved to intercept him.

  Muad’Dib had said another thing, Stilgar reminded himself: “Just as individuals are born, mature, breed, and die, so do societies and civilizations and governments.”

  Dangerous or not, there would be change. The beautiful young Fremen knew this. They could look outward and see it, prepare for it.

  Stilgar was forced to stop. It was either that or walk right
over Leto.

  The youth peered up at him owlishly, said: “You see, Stil? Tradition isn’t the absolute guide you thought it was.”

  ***

  A Fremen dies when he is too long from the desert; this we call “the water sickness.”

  —STILGAR, THE COMMENTARIES

  “It is difficult for me, asking you to do this,” Alia said. “But … I must insure that there’s an empire for Paul’s children to inherit. There’s no other reason for the Regency.”

  Alia turned from where she was seated at a mirror completing her morning toilet. She looked at her husband, measuring how he absorbed these words. Duncan Idaho deserved careful study in these moments; there was no doubt that he’d become something far more subtle and dangerous than the one-time swordmaster of House Atreides. The outer appearance remained similar—the black goat hair over sharp dark features—but in the long years since his awakening from the ghola state he had undergone an inner metamorphosis.

  She wondered now, as she had wondered many times, what the ghola rebirth-after-death might have hidden in the secret loneliness of him. Before the Tleilaxu had worked their subtle science on him, Duncan’s reactions had borne clear labels for the Atreides—loyalty, fanatic adherence to the moral code of his mercenary forebears, swift to anger and swift to recover. He had been implacable in his resolve for revenge against House Harkonnen. And he had died saving Paul. But the Tleilaxu had bought his body from the Sardaukar and, in their regeneration vats, they had grown a zombie-katrundo: the flesh of Duncan Idaho, but none of his conscious memories. He’d been trained as a mentat and sent as a gift, a human computer for Paul, a fine tool equipped with a hypnotic compulsion to slay his owner. The flesh of Duncan Idaho had resisted that compulsion and, in the intolerable stress, his cellular past had come back to him.

  Alia had decided long ago that it was dangerous to think of him as Duncan in the privacy of her thoughts. Better to think of him by his ghola name, Hayt. Far better. And it was essential that he get not the slightest glimpse of the old Baron Harkonnen sitting there in her mind.

  Duncan saw Alia studying him, turned away. Love could not hide the changes in her, nor conceal from him the transparency of her motives. The many-faceted metal eyes which the Tleilaxu had given him were cruel in their ability to penetrate deception. They limned her now as a gloating, almost masculine figure, and he could not stand to see her thus.

  “Why do you turn away?” Alia asked.

  “I must think about this thing,” he said. “The Lady Jessica is … an Atreides.”

  “And your loyalty is to House Atreides, not to me,” Alia pouted.

  “Don’t put such fickle interpretations into me,” he said.

  Alia pursed her lips. Had she moved too rapidly?

  Duncan crossed to the chambered opening which looked down on a corner of the Temple plaza. He could see pilgrims beginning to gather there, the Arrakeen traders moving in to feed on the edges like a pack of predators upon a herd of beasts. He focused on a particular group of tradesmen, spice-fiber baskets over their arms, Fremen mercenaries a pace behind them. They moved with a stolid force through the gathering throng.

  “They sell pieces of etched marble,” he said, pointing. “Did you know that? They set the pieces out in the desert to be etched by stormsands. Sometimes they find interesting patterns in the stone. They call it a new art form, very popular: genuine storm-etched marble from Dune. I bought a piece of it last week—a golden tree with five tassels, lovely but very fragile.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Alia said.

  “I haven’t changed the subject,” he said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not art. Humans create art by their own violence, by their own volition.” He put his right hand on the windowsill. “The twins detest this city and I’m afraid I see their point.”

  “I fail to see the association,” Alia said. “The abduction of my mother is not a real abduction. She will be safe as your captive.”

  “This city was built by the blind,” he said. “Did you know that Leto and Stilgar went out from Sietch Tabr into the desert last week? They were gone the whole night.”

  “It was reported to me,” she said. “These baubles from the sand—would you have me prohibit their sale?”

  “That’d be bad for business,” he said, turning. “Do you know what Stilgar said when I asked why they went out on the sand that way? He said Leto wished to commune with the spirit of Muad’Dib.”

  Alia felt the sudden coldness of panic, looked in the mirror a moment to recover. Leto would not venture from the sietch at night for such nonsense. Was it a conspiracy?

  Idaho put a hand over his eyes to blot out the sight of her, said: “Stilgar told me he went along with Leto because he still believes in Muad’Dib.”

  “Of course he does!”

  Idaho chuckled, a hollow sound. “He said he still believes because Muad’Dib was always for the little people.”

  “What did you say to that?” Alia asked, her voice betraying her fear.

  Idaho dropped his hand from his eyes. “I said, ‘That must make you one of the little people.’ ”

  “Duncan! That’s a dangerous game. Bait that Fremen Naib and you could awaken a beast to destroy us all.”

  “He still believes in Muad’Dib,” Idaho said. “That’s our protection.”

  “What was his reply?”

  “He said he knew his own mind.”

  “I see.”

  “No … I don’t believe you do. Things that bite have longer teeth than Stilgar’s.”

  “I don’t understand you today, Duncan. I ask you to do a very important thing, a thing vital to … What is all of this rambling?”

  How petulant she sounded. He turned back to the chambered window. “When I was trained as a mentat … It is very difficult, Alia, to learn how to work your own mind. You learn first that the mind must be allowed to work itself. That’s very strange. You can work your own muscles, exercise them, strengthen them, but the mind acts of itself. Sometimes, when you have learned this about the mind, it shows you things you do not want to see.”

  “And that’s why you tried to insult Stilgar?”

  “Stilgar doesn’t know his own mind; he doesn’t let it run free.”

  “Except in the spice orgy.”

  “Not even there. That’s what makes him a Naib. To be a leader of men, he controls and limits his reactions. He does what is expected of him. Once you know this, you know Stilgar and you can measure the length of his teeth.”

  “That’s the Fremen way,” she said. “Well, Duncan, will you do it, or won’t you? She must be taken and it must be made to look like the work of House Corrino.”

  He remained silent, weighing her tone and arguments in his mentat way. This abduction plan spoke of a coldness and a cruelty whose dimensions, thus revealed, shocked him. Risk her own mother’s life for the reasons thus far produced? Alia was lying. Perhaps the whisperings about Alia and Javid were true. This thought produced an icy hardness in his stomach.

  “You’re the only one I can trust for this,” Alia said.

  “I know that,” he said.

  She took this as acceptance, smiled at herself in the mirror.

  “You know,” Idaho said, “the mentat learns to look at every human as a series of relationships.”

  Alia did not respond. She sat, caught in a personal memory which drew a blank expression on her face. Idaho, glancing over his shoulder at her, saw the expression and shuddered. It was as though she communed with voices heard only by herself.

  “Relationships,” he whispered.

  And he thought: One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin—only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations. It was the same with governments—even the Regency. Old governments can be traced like discarded molts. I must carry out this scheme, but not in the way Alia commands.

  Presently Alia shook her shoulders, said: “Leto should not be going out like that in these times. I will reprim
and him.”

  “Not even with Stilgar?”

  “Not even with him.”

  She arose from her mirror, crossed to where Idaho stood beside the window, put a hand on his arm.

  He repressed a shiver, reduced this reaction to a mentat computation. Something in her revolted him.

  Something in her.

  He could not bring himself to look at her. He smelled the melange of her cosmetics, cleared his throat.

  She said: “I will be busy today examining Farad’n’s gifts.”

  “The clothing?”

  “Yes. Nothing he does is what it seems. And we must remember that his Bashar, Tyekanik, is an adept of chaumurky, chaumas, and all the other subtleties of royal assassination.”

  “The price of power,” he said, pulling away from her. “But we’re still mobile and Farad’n is not.”

  She studied his chiseled profile. Sometimes the workings of his mind were difficult to fathom. Was he thinking only that freedom of action gave life to a military power? Well, life on Arrakis had been too secure for too long. Senses once whetted by omnipresent dangers could degenerate when not used.

  “Yes,” she said, “we still have the Fremen.”

  “Mobility,” he repeated. “We cannot degenerate into infantry. That’d be foolish.”

  His tone annoyed her, and she said: “Farad’n will use any means to destroy us.”

  “Ahhh, that’s it,” he said. “That’s a form of initiative, a mobility which we didn’t have in the old days. We had a code, the code of House Atreides. We always paid our way and let the enemy be the pillagers. That restriction no longer holds, of course. We’re equally mobile, House Atreides and House Corrino.”