The Preacher sighed. “To the Sisterhood, all of it, I am dead. Do not try to revive me.”
Still not looking at him, Halleck asked: “But why does she—”
“She does what she must. She makes her own life, thinking she rules many lives. Thus we all play god.”
“But you’re alive,” Halleck whispered, overcome now by his realization, turning at last to stare at this man, younger than himself, but so aged by the desert that he appeared to carry twice Halleck’s years.
“What is that?” Paul demanded. “Alive?”
Halleck peered around them at the watching Fremen, their faces caught between doubt and awe.
“My mother never had to learn my lesson.” It was Paul’s voice! “To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There’d be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”
“But you’re alive!” Halleck spoke louder now.
Paul ignored the excitement in his old companion’s voice, asked: “Would you really have pitted this lad against his sister in the test-Mashhad? What deadly nonsense! Each would have said: ‘No! Kill me! Let the other live!’ Where would such a test lead? What is it then to be alive, Gurney?”
“That was not the test,” Halleck protested. He did not like the way the Fremen pressed closer around them, studying Paul, ignoring Leto.
But Leto intruded now. “Look at the fabric, father.”
“Yes … yes …” Paul held his head high as though sniffing the air. “It’s Farad’n, then!”
“How easy it is to follow our thoughts instead of our senses,” Leto said.
Halleck had been unable to follow this thought and, about to ask, was interrupted by Leto’s hand upon his arm. “Don’t ask, Gurney. You might return to suspecting that I’m Abomination. No! Let it happen, Gurney. If you try to force it, you’ll only destroy yourself.”
But Halleck felt himself overcome by doubts. Jessica had warned him. “They can be very beguiling, these pre-born. They have tricks you’ve never even dreamed.” Halleck shook his head slowly. And Paul! Gods below! Paul alive and in league with this question mark he’d fathered!
The Fremen around them could no longer be held back. They pressed between Halleck and Paul, between Leto and Paul, shoving the two to the background. The air was showered with hoarse questions. “Are you Muab’Dib? Are you truly Muad’Dib? Is it true, what he says? Tell us!”
“You must think of me only as The Preacher,” Paul said, pushing against them. “I cannot be Paul Atreides or Muad’Dib, never again. I’m not Chani’s mate or Emperor.”
Halleck, fearing what might happen if these frustrated questions found no logical answer, was about to act when Leto moved ahead of him. It was there Halleck first saw an element of the terrible change which had been wrought in Leto. A bull voice roared, “Stand aside!”—and Leto moved forward, thrusting adult Fremen right and left, knocking them down, clubbing them with his hands, wrenching knives from their hands by grasping the blades.
In less than a minute those Fremen still standing were pressed back against the walls in silent consternation. Leto stood beside his father. “When Shai-Hulud speaks, you obey,” Leto said.
And when a few of the Fremen had started to argue, Leto had torn a corner of rock from the passage wall beside the room’s exit and crumbled it in his bare hands, smiling all the while.
“I will tear your sietch down around your faces,” he said.
“The Desert Demon,” someone whispered.
“And your qanats,” Leto agreed. “I will rip them apart. We have not been here, do you hear me?”
Heads shook from side to side in terrified submission.
“No one here has seen us,” Leto said. “One whisper from you and I will return to drive you into the desert without water.”
Halleck saw hands being raised in the warding gesture, the sign of the worm.
“We will go now, my father and I, accompanied by our old friend,” Leto said. “Make our ’thopter ready.”
And Leto had guided them to Shuloch then, explaining en route that they must move swiftly because “Farad’n will be here on Arrakis very soon. And, as my father has said, then you’ll see the real test, Gurney.”
Looking down from the Shuloch butte, Halleck asked himself once more, as he asked every day: “What test? What does he mean?”
But Leto was no longer in Shuloch, and Paul refused to answer.
***
Church and State, scientific reason and faith, the individual and his community, even progress and tradition—all of these can be reconciled in the teachings of Muad’Dib. He taught us that there exist no intransigent opposites except in the beliefs of men. Anyone can rip aside the veil of Time. You can discover the future in the past or in your own imagination. Doing this, you win back your consciousness in your inner being. You know then that the universe is a coherent whole and you are indivisible from it.
—THE PREACHER AT ARRAKEEN AFTER HARQ AL-ADA
Ghanima sat far back outside the circle of light from the spice lamps and watched this Buer Agarves. She didn’t like his round face and agitated eyebrows, his way of moving his feet when he spoke, as though his words were a hidden music to which he danced.
He’s not here to parley with Stil, Ghanima told herself, seeing this confirmed in every word and movement from this man. She moved farther back away from the Council circle.
Every sietch had a room such as this one, but the meeting hall of the abandoned djedida struck Ghanima as a cramped place because it was so low. Sixty people from Stilgar’s band plus the nine who’d come with Agarves filled only one end of the hall. Spice-oil lamps reflected against low beams which supported the ceiling. The light cast wavering shadows which danced on the walls, and the pungent smoke filled the place with the smell of cinnamon.
The meeting had started at dusk after the moisture prayers and evening meal. It had been going on for more than an hour now, and Ghanima couldn’t fathom the hidden currents in Agarves’s performance. His words appeared clear enough, but his motions and eye movements didn’t agree.
Agarves was speaking now, responding to a question from one of Stilgar’s lieutenants, a niece of Harah’s named Rajia. She was a darkly ascetic young woman whose mouth turned down at the corners, giving her an air of perpetual distrust. Ghanima found the expression satisfying in the circumstances.
“Certainly I believe Alia will grant a full and complete pardon to all of you,” Agarves said. “I’d not be here with this message otherwise.”
Stilgar intervened as Rajia made to speak once more. “I’m not so much worried about our trusting her as I am about whether she trusts you.” Stilgar’s voice carried growling undertones. He was uncomfortable with this suggestion that he return to his old status.
“It doesn’t matter whether she trusts me,” Agarves said. “To be candid about it, I don’t believe she does. I’ve been too long searching for you without finding you. But I’ve always felt she didn’t really want you captured. She was—”
“She was the wife of the man I slew,” Stilgar said. “I grant you that he asked for it. Might just as well’ve fallen on his own knife. But this new attitude smells of—”
Agarves danced to his feet, anger plain on his face. “She forgives you! How many times must I say it? She had the Priests make a great show of asking divine guidance from—”
“You’ve only raised another issue.” It was Irulan, leaning forward past Rajia, blonde head set off against Rajia’s darkness. “She has convinced you, but she may have other plans.”
“The Priesthood has—”
“But there are all of these stories,” Irulan said. “That you’re more than just a military advisor, that you’re her—”
“Enough!” Agarves was beside himself with rage. His hand hovered near his knife. Warring emotions moved just below the surface of his skin, twisting his features. “Believe w
hat you will, but I cannot go on with that woman! She fouls me! She dirties everything she touches! I am used. I am soiled. But I have not lifted my knife against my kin. Now—no more!”
Ghanima, observing this, thought: That, at least, was truth coming out of him.
Surprisingly, Stilgar broke into laughter. “Ahhhh, cousin,” he said. “For-give me, but there’s truth in anger.”
“Then you agree?”
“I’ve not said that.” He raised a hand as Agarves threatened another outburst. “It’s not for my sake, Buer, but there are these others.” He gestured around him. “They are my responsibility. Let us consider for a moment what reparations Alia offers.”
“Reparations? There’s no word of reparations. Pardon, but no—”
“Then what does she offer as surety of her word?”
“Sietch Tabr and you as Naib, full autonomy as a neutral. She understands now how—”
“I’ll not go back to her entourage or provide her with fighting men,” Stilgar warned. “Is that understood?”
Ghanima could hear Stilgar beginning to weaken and thought: No, Stil! No!
“No need for that,” Agarves said. “Alia wants only Ghanima returned to her and the carrying out of the betrothal promise which she—”
“So now it comes out!” Stilgar said, his brows drawing down. “Ghanima’s the price of my pardon. Does she think me—”
“She thinks you sensible,” Agarves argued, resuming his seat.
Gleefully, Ghanima thought: He won’t do it. Save your breath. He won’t do it.
As she thought this, Ghanima heard a soft rustling behind and to her left. She started to turn, felt powerful hands grab her. A heavy rag reeking of sleep-drugs covered her face before she could cry out. As consciousness faded, she felt herself being carried toward a door in the hall’s darkest reaches. And she thought: I should have guessed! I should’ve been prepared! But the hands that held her were adult and strong. She could not squirm away from them.
Ghanima’s last sensory impressions were of cold air, a glimpse of stars, and a hooded face which looked down at her, then asked: “She wasn’t injured, was she?”
The answer was lost as the stars wheeled and streaked across her gaze, losing themselves in a blaze of light which was the inner core of her selfdom.
***
Muad’Dib gave us a particular kind of knowledge about prophetic insight, about the behavior which surrounds such insight and its influence upon events which are seen to be “on line.” (That is, events which are set to occur in a related system which the prophet reveals and interprets.) As has been noted elsewhere, such insight operates as a peculiar trap for the prophet himself. He can become the victim of what he knows—which is a relatively common human failing. The danger is that those who predict real events may overlook the polarizing effect brought about by overindulgence in their own truth. They tend to forget that nothing in a polarized universe can exist without its opposite being present.
—THE PRESCIENT VISION BY HARQ AL-ADA
Blowing sand hung like fog on the horizon, obscuring the rising sun. The sand was cold in the dune shadows. Leto stood outside the ring of the palmyrie looking into the desert. He smelled dust and the aroma of spiny plants, heard the morning sounds of people and animals. The Fremen maintained no qanat in this place. They had only a bare minimum of hand planting irrigated by the women, who carried water in skin bags. Their windtrap was a fragile thing, easily destroyed by the stormwinds but easily rebuilt. Hardship, the rigors of the spice trade, and adventure were a way of life here. These Fremen still believed heaven was the sound of running water, but they cherished an ancient concept of Freedom which Leto shared.
Freedom is a lonely state, he thought.
Leto adjusted the folds of the white robe which covered his living stillsuit. He could feel how the sandtrout membrane had changed him and, as always with this feeling, he was forced to overcome a deep sense of loss. He no longer was completely human. Odd things swam in his blood. Sandtrout cilia had penetrated every organ, adjusting, changing. The sandtrout itself was changing, adapting. But Leto, knowing this, felt himself torn by the old threads of his lost humanity, his life caught in primal anguish with its ancient continuity shattered. He knew the trap of indulging in such emotion, though. He knew it well.
Let the future happen of itself, he thought. The only rule governing creativity is the act of creation itself.
It was difficult to take his gaze away from the sands, the dunes—the great emptiness. Here at the edge of the sand lay a few rocks, but they led the imagination outward into the winds, the dust, the sparse and lonely plants and animals, dune merging into dune, desert into desert.
Behind him came the sound of a flute playing for the morning prayer, the chant for moisture which now was a subtly altered serenade to the new Shai-Hulud. This knowledge in Leto’s mind gave the music a sense of eternal loneliness.
I could just walk away into that desert, he thought.
Everything would change then. One direction would be as good as another. He had already learned to live a life free of possessions. He had refined the Fremen mystique to a terrible edge: everything he took with him was necessary, and that was all he took. But he carried nothing except the robe on his back, the Atreides hawk ring hidden in its folds, and the skin-which-was-not-his-own.
It would be easy to walk away from here.
Movement high in the sky caught his attention: the splayed-gap wingtips identified a vulture. The sight filled his chest with aching. Like the wild Fremen, vultures lived in this land because this was where they were born. They knew nothing better. The desert made them what they were.
Another Fremen breed was coming up in the wake of Muad’Dib and Alia, though. They were the reason he could not let himself walk away into the desert as his father had done. Leto recalled Idaho’s words from the early days: “These Fremen! They’re magnificently alive. I’ve never met a greedy Fremen.”
There were plenty of greedy Fremen now.
A wave of sadness passed over Leto. He was committed to a course which could change all of that, but at a terrible price. And the management of that course became increasingly difficult as they neared the vortex.
Kralizec, the Typhoon Struggle, lay ahead … but Kralizec or worse would be the price of a misstep.
Voices sounded behind Leto, then the clear piping sound of a child speaking: “Here he is.”
Leto turned.
The Preacher had come out of the palmyrie, led by a child.
Why do I still think of him as The Preacher? Leto wondered.
The answer lay there on the clean tablet of Leto’s mind: Because this is no longer Muad’Dib, no longer Paul Atreides. The desert had made him what he was. The desert and the jackals of Jacurutu with their overdoses of melange and their constant betrayals. The Preacher was old before his time, old not despite the spice but because of it.
“They said you wanted to see me now,” The Preacher said, speaking as his child guide stopped.
Leto looked at the child of the palmyrie, a person almost as tall as himself, with awe tempered by an avaricious curiosity. The young eyes glinted darkly above the child-sized stillsuit mask.
Leto waved a hand. “Leave us.”
For a moment there was rebellion in the child’s shoulders, then the awe and native Fremen respect for privacy took over. The child left them.
“You know Farad’n is here on Arrakis?” Leto asked.
“Gurney told me when he flew me down last night.”
And The Preacher thought: How coldly measured his words are. He’s like I was in the old days.
“I face a difficult choice,” Leto said.
“I thought you’d already made all the choices.”
“We know that trap, father.”
The Preacher cleared his throat. The tensions told him how near they were to the shattering crisis. Now Leto would not be relying on pure vision, but on vision management.
“You need my
help?” The Preacher asked.
“Yes. I’m returning to Arrakeen and I wish to go as your guide.”
“To what end?”
“Would you preach once more in Arrakeen?”
“Perhaps. There are things I’ve not said to them.”
“You will not come back to the desert, father.”
“If I go with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do whatever you decide.”
“Have you considered? With Farad’n there, your mother will be with him.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Once more, The Preacher cleared his throat. It was a betrayal of nervousness which Muad’Dib would never have permitted. This flesh had been too long away from the old regimen of self-discipline, his mind too often betrayed into madness by the Jacurutu. And The Preacher thought that perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to return to Arrakeen.
“You don’t have to go back there with me,” Leto said. “But my sister is there and I must return. You could go with Gurney.”
“And you’d go to Arrakeen alone?”
“Yes. I must meet Farad’n.”
“I will go with you,” The Preacher sighed.
And Leto sensed a touch of the old vision madness in The Preacher’s manner, wondered: Has he been playing the prescience game? No. He’d never go that way again. He knew the trap of a partial commitment. The Preacher’s every word confirmed that he had handed over the visions to his son, knowing that everything in this universe had been anticipated.
It was the old polarities which taunted The Preacher now. He had fled from paradox into paradox.
“We’ll be leaving in a few minutes, then,” Leto said. “Will you tell Gurney? ”
“Gurney’s not going with us?”
“I want Gurney to survive.”
The Preacher opened himself to the tensions then. They were in the air around him, in the ground under his feet, a motile thing which focused onto the non-child who was his son. The blunt scream of his old visions waited in The Preacher’s throat.
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