Dune Messiah dc-2

by Frank Herbert

  Paul, knowing that sound and glow from the earliest nightmare glimpses of his vision, felt an odd sense of fulfillment. It went the way it must.

  “Stone burner!” someone screamed.

  “Stone burner!” The cry was all around him. “Stone burner … stone burner …”

  Because it was required of him, Paul threw a protective arm across his face, dove for the low lip of a curb. It already was too late, of course.

  Where Otheym’s house had been there stood now a pillar of fire, a blinding jet roaring at the heavens. It gave off a dirty brilliance which threw into sharp relief every ballet movement of the fighting and fleeing men, the tipping retreat of ornithopters.

  For every member of this frantic throng it was too late.

  The ground grew hot beneath Paul. He heard the sound of running stop. Men threw themselves down all around him, every one of them aware that there was no point in running. The first damage had been done; and now they must wait out the extent of the stone burner’s potency. The things’s radiation, which no man could outrun, already had penetrated their flesh. The peculiar result of stone-burner radiation already was at work in them. What else this weapon might do now lay in the planning of the men who had used it, the men who had defied the Great Convention to use it.

  “God’s … a stone burner,” someone whimpered. “I … don’t … want … to … be … blind.”

  “Who does?” The harsh voice of a trooper far down the street.

  “The Tleilaxu will sell many eyes here,” someone near Paul growled. “Now, shut up and wait!”

  They waited.

  Paul remained silent, thinking what this weapon implied. Too much fuel in it and it’d cut its way into the planet’s core. Dune’s molten level lay deep, but the more dangerous for that. Such pressures released and out of control might split a planet, scattering lifeless bits and pieces through space.

  “I think it’s dying down a bit,” someone said.

  “It’s just digging deeper,” Paul cautioned. “Stay put, all of you. Stilgar will be sending help.”

  “Stilgar got away?”

  “Stilgar got away.”

  “The ground’s hot,” someone complained.

  “They dared use atomics!” a trooper near Paul protested.

  “The sound’s diminishing,” someone down the street said.

  Paul ignored the words, concentrated on his fingertips against the street. He could feel the rolling-rumbling of the thing—deep … deep …

  “My eyes!” someone cried. “I can’t see!”

  Someone closer to it than I was, Paul thought. He still could see to the end of the cul-de-sac when he lifted his head, although there was a mistiness across the scene. A red-yellow glow filled the area where Otheym’s house and its neighbor had been. Pieces of adjoining buildings made dark patterns as they crumbled into the glowing pit.

  Paul climbed to his feet. He felt the stone burner die, silence beneath him. His body was wet with perspiration against the stillsuit’s slickness—too much for the suit to accommodate. The air he drew into his lungs carried the heat and sulfur stench of the burner.

  As he looked at the troopers beginning to stand up around him, the mist on Paul’s eyes faded into darkness. He summoned up his oracular vision of these moments, then, turned and strode along the track that Time had carved for him, fitting himself into the vision so tightly that it could not escape. He felt himself grow aware of this place as a multitudinous possession, reality welded to prediction.

  Moans and groans of his troopers arose all around him as the men realized their blindness.

  “Hold fast!” Paul shouted. “Help is coming!” And, as the complaints persisted, he said: “This is Muad’dib! I command you to hold fast! Help comes!”

  Silence.

  Then, true to his vision, a nearby guardsman said: “Is it truly the Emperor? Which of you can see? Tell me.”

  “None of us has eyes,” Paul said. “They have taken my eyes, as well, but not my vision. I can see you standing there, a dirty wall within touching distance on your left. Now wait bravely. Stilgar comes with our friends.”

  The thwock-thwock of many ’thopters grew louder all around. There was the sound of hurrying feet. Paul watched his friends come, matching their sounds to his oracular vision.

  “Stilgar!” Paul shouted, waving an arm. “Over here!”

  “Thanks to Shai-hulud,” Stilgar cried, running up to Paul. “You’re not …” In the sudden silence, Paul’s vision showed him Stilgar staring with an expression of agony at the ruined eyes of his friend and Emperor. “Oh, m’Lord,” Stilgar groaned. “Usul … Usul … Usul …”

  “What of the stone burner?” one of the newcomers shouted.

  “It’s ended,” Paul said, raising his voice. He gestured. “Get up there now and rescue the ones who were closest to it. Put up barriers. Lively now!” He turned back to Stilgar.

  “Do you see, m’Lord?” Stilgar asked, wonder in his tone. “How can you see?”

  For answer, Paul put a finger out to touch Stilgar’s cheek above the stillsuit mouthcap, felt tears. “You need give no moisture to me, old friend,” Paul said. “I am not dead.”

  “But your eyes!”

  “They’ve blinded my body, but not my vision,” Paul said. “Ah, Stil, I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.”

  “Usul, I don’t, I don’t …”

  “Don’t try to understand it. Accept it. I am in the world beyond this world here. For me, they are the same. I need no hand to guide me. I see every movement all around me. I see every expression of your face. I have no eyes, yet I see.”

  Stilgar shook his head sharply. “Sire, we must conceal your affliction from—”

  “We hide it from no man,” Paul said.

  “But the law …”

  “We live by the Atreides Law now, Stil. The Fremen Law that the blind should be abandoned in the desert applies only to the blind. I am not blind. I live in the cycle of being where the war of good and evil has its arena. We are at a turning point in the succession of ages and we have our parts to play.”

  In a sudden stillness, Paul heard one of the wounded being led past him. “It was terrible,” the man groaned, “a great fury of fire.”

  “None of these men shall be taken into the desert,” Paul said. “You hear me, Stil?”

  “I hear you, m’Lord.”

  “They are to be fitted with new eyes at my expense.”

  “It will be done, m’Lord.”

  Paul, hearing the awe grow in Stilgar’s voice, said: “I will be at the Command ’thopter. Take charge here.”

  “Yes, m’Lord.”

  Paul stepped around Stilgar, strode down the street. His vision told him every movement, every irregularity beneath his feet, every face he encountered. He gave orders as he moved, pointing to men of his personal entourage, calling out names, summoning to himself the ones who represented the intimate apparatus of government. He could feel the terror grow behind him, the fearful whispers.

  “His eyes!”

  “But he looked right at you, called you by name!”

  At the Command ’thopter, he deactivated his personal shield, reached into the machine and took the microphone from the hand of a startled communications officer, issued a swift string of orders, thrust the microphone back into the officer’s hand. Turning, Paul summoned a weapons specialist, one of the eager and brilliant new breed who remembered sietch life only dimly.

  “They used a stone burner,” Paul said.

  After the briefest pause, the man said: “So I was told, Sire.”

  “You know what that means, of course.”

  “The fuel could only have been atomic.”

  Paul nodded, thinking of how this man’s mind must be racing. Atomics. The Great Convention prohibited such weapons. Discovery of the perpetrator would bring down the combined retributive assault of the Great Hou
ses. Old feuds would be forgotten, discarded in the face of this threat and the ancient fears it aroused.

  “It cannot have been manufactured without leaving some traces,” Paul said. “You will assemble the proper equipment and search out the place where the stone burner was made.”

  “At once, Sire.” With one last fearful glance, the man sped away.

  “M’Lord,” the communications officer ventured from behind him. “Your eyes …”

  Paul turned, reached into the ’thopter, returned the command set to his personal band. “Call Chani,” he ordered. “Tell her … tell her I am alive and will be with her soon.”

  Now the forces gather, Paul thought. And he noted how strong was the smell of fear in the perspiration all around.

  ***

  He has gone from Alia,

  The womb of heaven!

  Holy, holy, holy!

  Fire-sand leagues

  Confront our Lord.

  He can see

  Without eyes!

  A demon upon him!

  Holy, holy, holy

  Equation:

  He solved for

  Martyrdom!

  —THE MOON FALLS DOWN SONGS OF MUAD’DIB

  After seven days of radiating fevered activity, the Keep took on an unnatural quiet. On this morning, there were people about, but they spoke in whispers, heads close together, and they walked softly. Some scurried with an oddly furtive gait. The sight of a guard detail coming in from the forecourt drew questioning looks and frowns at the noise which the newcomers brought with their tramping about and stacking of weapons. The newcomers caught the mood of the interior, though, and began moving in that furtive way.

  Talk of the stone burner still floated around: “He said the fire had blue-green in it and a smell out of hell.”

  “Elpa is a fool! He says he’ll commit suicide rather than take Tleilaxu eyes.”

  “I don’t like talk of eyes.”

  “Muad’dib passed me and called me by name!”

  “How does He see without eyes?”

  “People are leaving, had you heard? There’s great fear. The Naibs say they’ll go to Sietch Makab for a Grand Council.”

  “What’ve they done with the Panegyrist?”

  “I saw them take him into the chamber where the Naibs are meeting. Imagine Korba a prisoner!”

  Chani had arisen early, awakened by a stillness in the Keep. Awakening, she’d found Paul sitting beside her, his eyeless sockets aimed at some formless place beyond the far wall of their bedchamber. What the stone burner had done with its peculiar affinity for eye tissue, all that ruined flesh had been removed. Injections and unguents had saved the stronger flesh around the sockets, but she felt that the radiation had gone deeper.

  Ravenous hunger seized her as she sat up. She fed on the food kept by the bedside—spicebread, a heavy cheese.

  Paul gestured at the food. “Beloved, there was no way to spare you this. Believe me.”

  Chani stilled a fit of trembling when he aimed those empty sockets at her. She’d given up asking him to explain. He spoke so oddly: “I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who’ll buy? Who’ll sell?”

  What could he mean by such words?

  He refused even to consider Tleilaxu eyes, although he bought them with a lavish hand for the men who’d shared his affliction.

  Hunger satisfied, Chani slipped from bed, glanced back at Paul, noted his tiredness. Grim lines framed his mouth. The dark hair stood up, mussed from a sleep that hadn’t healed. He appeared so saturnine and remote. The back and forth of waking and sleeping did nothing to change this. She forced herself to turn away, whispered: “My love … my love …”

  He leaned over, pulled her back into the bed, kissed her cheeks. “Soon we’ll go back to our desert,” he whispered. “Only a few things remain to be done here.”

  She trembled at the finality in his voice.

  He tightened his arms around her, murmured: “Don’t fear me, my Sihaya. Forget mystery and accept love. There’s no mystery about love. It comes from life. Can’t you feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  She put a palm against his chest, counting his heartbeats. His love cried out to the Fremen spirit in her—torrential, outpouring, savage. A magnetic power enveloped her.

  “I promise you a thing, beloved,” he said. “A child of ours will rule such an empire that mine will fade in comparison. Such achievements of living and art and sublime—”

  “We’re here now!” she protested, fighting a dry sob. “And … I feel we have so little … time.”

  “We have eternity, beloved.”

  “You may have eternity. I have only now.”

  “But this is eternity.” He stroked her forehead.

  She pressed against him, lips on his neck. The pressure agitated the life in her womb. She felt it stir.

  Paul felt it, too. He put a hand on her abdomen, said: “Ahh, little ruler of the universe, wait your time. This moment is mine.”

  She wondered then why he always spoke of the life within her as singular. Hadn’t the medics told him? She searched back in her own memory, curious that the subject had never arisen between them. Surely, he must know she carried twins. She hesitated on the point of raising this question. He must know. He knew everything. He knew all the things that were herself. His hands, his mouth—all of him knew her.

  Presently, she said: “Yes, love. This is forever … this is real.” And she closed her eyes tightly lest sight of his dark sockets stretch her soul from paradise to hell. No matter the rihani magic in which he’d enciphered their lives, his flesh remained real, his caresses could not be denied.

  When they arose to dress for the day, she said: “If the people only knew your love …”

  But his mood had changed. “You can’t build politics on love,” he said. “People aren’t concerned with love; it’s too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can’t have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable?”

  “You’re not a despot!” she protested, tying her scarf. “Your laws are just.”

  “Ahh, laws,” he said. He crossed to the window, pulled back the draperies as though he could look out. “What’s law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law—our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don’t look too closely at the law. Do, and you’ll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You’ll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.”

  Chani’s mouth drew into a tight line. She couldn’t deny his wisdom and sagacity, but these moods frightened her. He turned upon himself and she sensed internal wars. It was as though he took the Fremen maxim, “Never to forgive—never to forget,” and whipped his own flesh with it.

  She crossed to his side, stared past him at an angle. The growing heat of the day had begun pulling the north wind out of these protected latitudes. The wind painted a false sky full of ochre plumes and sheets of crystal, strange designs in rushing gold and red. High and cold, the wind broke against the Shield Wall with fountains of dust.

  Paul felt Chani’s warmth beside him. Momentarily, he lowered a curtain of forgetfulness across his vision. He might just be standing here with his eyes closed. Time refused to stand still for him, though. He inhaled darkness—starless, tearless. His affliction dissolved substance until all that remained was astonishment at the way sounds condensed his universe. Everything around him leaned on his lonely sense of hearing, falling back only when he touched objects: the drapery, Chani’s hand … He caught himself listening for Chani’s breaths.

  Where was the insecurity of things that were only probable? he asked himself. His mind carried such a burden of mutilated memories. For every instant of reality there existed countless projections, things fated never to be. An invisible self within him remembered the false pasts, their burden threatening at times to overwhelm the present.

  Chani l
eaned against his arm.

  He felt his body through her touch: dead flesh carried by time eddies. He reeked of memories that had glimpsed eternity. To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity’s whims, oppressed by endless dimensions. The oracle’s false immortality demanded retribution: Past and Future became simultaneous.

  Once more, the vision arose from its black pit, locked onto him. It was his eyes. It moved his muscles. It guided him into the next moment, the next hour, the next day … until he felt himself to be always there!

  “It’s time we were going,” Chani said. “The Council …”

  “Alia will be there to stand in my place.”

  “Does she know what to do?”

  “She knows.”

  Alia’s day began with a guard squadron swarming into the parade yard below her quarters. She stared down at a scene of frantic confusion, clamorous and intimidating babble. The scene became intelligible only when she recognized the prisoner they’d brought: Korba, the Panegyrist.

  She made her morning toilet, moving occasionally to the window, keeping watch on the progress of impatience down there. Her gaze kept straying to Korba. She tried to remember him as the rough and bearded commander of the third wave in the battle of Arrakeen. It was impossible. Korba had become an immaculate fop dressed now in a Parato silk robe of exquisite cut. It lay open to the waist, revealing a beautifully laundered ruff and embroidered undercoat set with green gems. A purple belt gathered the waist. The sleeves poking through the robe’s armhole slits had been tailored into rivulet ridges of dark green and black velvet.

  A few Naibs had come out to observe the treatment accorded a fellow Fremen. They’d brought on the clamor, exciting Korba to protest his innocence. Alia moved her gaze across the Fremen faces, trying to recapture memories of the original men. The present blotted out the past. They’d all become hedonists, samplers of pleasures most men couldn’t even imagine.

  Their uneasy glances, she saw, strayed often to the doorway into the chamber where they would meet. They were thinking of Muad’dib’s blind-sight, a new manifestation of mysterious powers. By their law, a blind man should be abandoned in the desert, his water given up to Shai-hulud. But eyeless Muad’dib saw them. They disliked buildings, too, and felt vulnerable in space built above the ground. Give them a proper cave cut from rock, then they could relax—but not here, not with this new Muad’dib waiting inside.