Dune Messiah dc-2

by Frank Herbert

  They heard the wailing then, far away in the sietch depths. It grew louder … louder …

  The ghola whirled at a sudden glare of light, someone flinging wide the entrance seals. In the light, he saw a man with a raffish grin—no! Not a grin, but a grimace of grief! It was a Fedaykin lieutenant named Tandis. Behind him came a press of many people, all fallen silent now that they saw Muad’dib.

  “Chani …” Tandis said.

  “Is dead,” Paul whispered. “I heard her call.”

  He turned toward the sietch. He knew this place. It was a place where he could not hide. His onrushing vision illuminated the entire Fremen mob. He saw Tandis, felt the Fedaykin’s grief, the fear and anger.

  “She is gone,” Paul said.

  The ghola heard the words out of a blazing corona. They burned his chest, his backbone, the sockets of his metal eyes. He felt his right hand move toward the knife at his belt. His own thinking became strange, disjointed. He was a puppet held fast by strings reaching down from that awful corona. He moved to another’s commands, to another’s desires. The strings jerked his arms, his legs, his jaw. Sounds came squeezing out of his mouth, a terrifying repetitive noise—

  “Hraak! Hraak! Hraak!”

  The knife came up to strike. In that instant, he grabbed his own voice, shaped rasping words: “Run! Young master, run!”

  “We will not run,” Paul said. “We’ll move with dignity. We’ll do what must be done.”

  The ghola’s muscles locked. He shuddered, swayed.

  “… what must be done!” The words rolled in his mind like a great fish surfacing. “… what must be done!” Ahhh, that had sounded like the old Duke, Paul’s grandfather. The young master had some of the old man in him. “… what must be done!”

  The words began to unfold in the ghola’s consciousness. A sensation of living two lives simultaneously spread out through his awareness: Hayt / Idaho / Hayt / Idaho … He became a motionless chain of relative existence, singular, alone. Old memories flooded his mind. He marked them, adjusted them to new understandings, made a beginning at the integration of a new awareness. A new persona achieved a temporary form of internal tyranny. The masculating synthesis remained charged with potential disorder, but events pressed him to the temporary adjustment. The young master needed him.

  It was done then. He knew himself as Duncan Idaho, remembering everything of Hayt as though it had been stored secretly in him and ignited by a flaming catalyst. The corona dissolved. He shed the Tleilaxu compulsions.

  “Stay close to me, Duncan,” Paul said. “I’ll need to depend on you for many things.” And, as Idaho continued to stand entranced: “Duncan!”

  “Yes, I am Duncan.”

  “Of course you are! This was the moment when you came back. We’ll go inside now.”

  Idaho fell into step beside Paul. It was like the old times, yet not like them. Now that he stood free of the Tleilaxu, he could appreciate what they had given him. Zensunni training permitted him to overcome the shock of events. The mentat accomplishment formed a counterbalance. He put off all fear, standing above the source. His entire consciousness looked outward from a position of infinite wonder: he had been dead; he was alive.

  “Sire,” the Fedaykin Tandis said as they approached him, “the woman, Lichna, says she must see you. I told her to wait.”

  “Thank you,” Paul said. “The birth …”

  “I spoke to the medics,” Tandis said, falling into step. “They said you have two children, both of them alive and sound.”

  “Two?” Paul stumbled, caught himself on Idaho’s arm.

  “A boy and a girl,” Tandis said. “I saw them. They’re good Fremen babies.”

  “How … how did she die?” Paul whispered.

  “M’Lord?” Tandis bent close.

  “Chani?” Paul said.

  “It was the birth, m’Lord,” Tandis husked. “They said her body was drained by the speed of it. I don’t understand, but that is what they said.”

  “Take me to her,” Paul whispered.

  “M’Lord?”

  “Take me to her!”

  “That’s where we’re going, m’Lord.” Again, Tandis bent close to Paul. “Why does your ghola carry a bared knife?”

  “Duncan, put away your knife,” Paul said. “The time for violence is past.”

  As he spoke, Paul felt closer to the sound of his voice than to the mechanism which had created the sound. Two babies! The vision had contained but one. Yet, these moments went as the vision went. There was a person here who felt grief and anger. Someone. His own awareness lay in the grip of an awful treadmill, replaying his life from memory.

  Two babies?

  Again he stumbled. Chani, Chani, he thought. There was no other way. Chani, beloved, believe me that this death was quicker for you … and kinder. They’d have held our children hostage, displayed you in a cage and slave pits, reviled you with the blame for my death. This way … this way we destroy them and save our children.

  Children?

  Once more, he stumbled.

  I permitted this, he thought. I should feel guilty.

  The sound of noisy confusion filled the cavern ahead of them. It grew louder precisely as he remembered it growing louder. Yes, this was the pattern, the inexorable pattern, even with two children.

  Chani is dead, he told himself.

  At some faraway instant in a past which he had shared with others, this future had reached down to him. It had chivvied him and herded him into a chasm whose walls grew narrower and narrower. He could feel them closing in on him. This was the way the vision went.

  Chani is dead. I should abandon myself to grief.

  But that was not the way the vision went.

  “Has Alia been summoned?” he asked.

  “She is with Chani’s friends,” Tandis said.

  Paul sensed the mob pressing back to give him passage. Their silence moved ahead of him like a wave. The noisy confusion began dying down. A sense of congested emotion filled the sietch. He wanted to remove the people from his vision, found it impossible. Every face turning to follow him carried its special imprint. They were pitiless with curiosity, those faces. They felt grief, yes, but he understood the cruelty which drenched them. They were watching the articulate become dumb, the wise become a fool. Didn’t the clown always appeal to cruelty?

  This was more than a deathwatch, less than a wake.

  Paul felt his soul begging for respite, but still the vision moved him. Just a little farther now, he told himself. Black, visionless dark awaited him just ahead. There lay the place ripped out of the vision by grief and guilt, the place where the moon fell.

  He stumbled into it, would’ve fallen had Idaho not taken his arm in a fierce grip, a solid presence knowing how to share his grief in silence.

  “Here is the place,” Tandis said.

  “Watch your step, Sire,” Idaho said, helping him over an entrance lip. Hangings brushed Paul’s face. Idaho pulled him to a halt. Paul felt the room then, a reflection against his cheeks and ears. It was a rock-walled space with the rock hidden behind tapestries.

  “Where is Chani?” Paul whispered.

  Harah’s voice answered him: “She is right here, Usul.”

  Paul heaved a trembling sigh. He had feared her body already had been removed to the stills where Fremen reclaimed the water of the tribe. Was that the way the vision went? He felt abandoned in his blindness.

  “The children?” Paul asked.

  “They are here, too, m’Lord,” Idaho said.

  “You have beautiful twins, Usul,” Harah said, “a boy and a girl. See? We have them here in a creche.”

  Two children, Paul thought wonderingly. The vision had contained only a daughter. He cast himself adrift from Idaho’s arm, moved toward the place where Harah had spoken, stumbled into a hard surface. His hands explored it: the metaglass outlines of a creche.

  Someone took his left arm. “Usul?” It was Harah. She guided his hand into the creche.
He felt soft-soft flesh. It was so warm! He felt ribs, breathing.

  “That is your son,” Harah whispered. She moved his hand. “And this is your daughter.” Her hand tightened on his. “Usul, are you truly blind now?”

  He knew what she was thinking. The blind must be abandoned in the desert. Fremen tribes carried no dead weight.

  “Take me to Chani,” Paul said, ignoring her question.

  Harah turned him, guided him to the left.

  Paul felt himself accepting now the fact that Chani was dead. He had taken his place in a universe he did not want, wearing flesh that did not fit. Every breath he drew bruised his emotions. Two children! He wondered if he had committed himself to a passage where his vision would never return. It seemed unimportant.

  “Where is my brother?”

  It was Alia’s voice behind him. He heard the rush of her, the overwhelming presence as she took his arm from Harah.

  “I must speak to you!” Alia hissed.

  “In a moment,” Paul said.

  “Now! It’s about Lichna.”

  “I know,” Paul said. “In a moment.”

  “You don’t have a moment!”

  “I have many moments.”

  “But Chani doesn’t!”

  “Be still!” he ordered. “Chani is dead.” He put a hand across her mouth as she started to protest. “I order you to be still!” He felt her subside and removed his hand. “Describe what you see,” he said.

  “Paul!” Frustration and tears battled in her voice.

  “Never mind,” he said. And he forced himself to inner stillness, opened the eyes of his vision to this moment. Yes—it was still here. Chani’s body lay on a pallet within a ring of light. Someone had straightened her white robe, smoothed it trying to hide the blood from the birth. No matter; he could not turn his awareness from the vision of her face: such a mirror of eternity in the still features!

  He turned away, but the vision moved with him. She was gone … never to return. The air, the universe, all vacant—everywhere vacant. Was this the essence of his penance? he wondered. He wanted tears, but they would not come. Had he lived too long a Fremen? This death demanded its moisture!

  Nearby, a baby cried and was hushed. The sound pulled a curtain on his vision. Paul welcomed the darkness. This is another world, he thought. Two children.

  The thought came out of some lost oracular trance. He tried to recapture the timeless mind-dilation of the melange, but awareness fell short. No burst of the future came into this new consciousness. He felt himself rejecting the future—any future.

  “Goodbye, my Sihaya,” he whispered.

  Alia’s voice, harsh and demanding, came from somewhere behind him. “I’ve brought Lichna!”

  Paul turned. “That’s not Lichna,” he said. “That’s a Face Dancer. Lichna’s dead.”

  “But hear what she says,” Alia said.

  Slowly, Paul moved toward his sister’s voice.

  “I’m not surprised to find you alive, Atreides.” The voice was like Lichna’s, but with subtle differences, as though the speaker used Lichna’s vocal cords, but no longer bothered to control them sufficiently. Paul found himself struck by an odd note of honesty in the voice.

  “Not surprised?” Paul asked.

  “I am Scytale, a Tleilaxu of the Face Dancers, and I would know a thing before we bargain. Is that a ghola I see behind you, or Duncan Idaho?”

  “It’s Duncan Idaho,” Paul said. “And I will not bargain with you.”

  “I think you’ll bargain,” Scytale said.

  “Duncan,” Paul said, speaking over his shoulder, “will you kill this Tleilaxu if I ask it?”

  “Yes, m’Lord.” There was the suppressed rage of a berserker in Idaho’s voice.

  “Wait!” Alia said. “You don’t know what you’re rejecting.”

  “But I do know,” Paul said.

  “So it’s truly Duncan Idaho of the Atreides,” Scytale said. “We found the lever! A ghola can regain his past.” Paul heard footsteps. Someone brushed past him on the left. Scytale’s voice came from behind him now. “What do you remember of your past, Duncan?”

  “Everything. From my childhood on. I even remember you at the tank when they removed me from it,” Idaho said.

  “Wonderful,” Scytale breathed. “Wonderful.”

  Paul heard the voice moving. I need a vision, he thought. Darkness frustrated him. Bene Gesserit training warned him of terrifying menace in Scytale, yet the creature remained a voice, a shadow of movement—entirely beyond him.

  “Are these the Atreides babies?” Scytale asked.

  “Harah!” Paul cried. “Get her away from there!”

  “Stay where you are!” Scytale shouted. “All of you! I warn you, a Face Dancer can move faster than you suspect. My knife can have both these lives before you touch me.”

  Paul felt someone touch his right arm, then move off to the right.

  “That’s far enough, Alia,” Scytale said.

  “Alia,” Paul said. “Don’t.”

  “It’s my fault,” Alia groaned. “My fault!”

  “Atreides,” Scytale said, “shall we bargain now?”

  Behind him, Paul heard a single hoarse curse. His throat constricted at the suppressed violence in Idaho’s voice. Idaho must not break! Scytale would kill the babies!

  “To strike a bargain, one requires a thing to sell,” Scytale said. “Not so, Atreides? Will you have your Chani back? We can restore her to you. A ghola, Atreides. A ghola with full memory! But we must hurry. Call your friends to bring a cryological tank to preserve the flesh.”

  To hear Chani’s voice once more, Paul thought. To feel her presence beside me. Ahhh, that’s why they gave me Idaho as a ghola, to let me discover how much the re-creation is like the original. But now—full restoration … at their price. I’d be a Tleilaxu tool forevermore. And Chani … chained to the same fate by a threat to our children, exposed once more to the Qizarate’s plotting …

  “What pressures would you use to restore Chani’s memory to her?” Paul asked, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Would you condition her to … to kill one of her own children?”

  “We use whatever pressures we need,” Scytale said. “What say you, Atreides?”

  “Alia,” Paul said, “bargain with this thing. I cannot bargain with what I cannot see.”

  “A wise choice,” Scytale gloated. “Well, Alia, what do you offer me as your brother’s agent?”

  Paul lowered his head, bringing himself to stillness within stillness. He’d glimpsed something just then—like a vision, but not a vision. It had been a knife close to him. There!

  “Give me a moment to think,” Alia said.

  “My knife is patient,” Scytale said, “but Chani’s flesh is not. Take a reasonable amount of time.”

  Paul felt himself blinking. It could not be … but it was! He felt eyes! Their vantage point was odd and they moved in an erratic way. There! The knife swam into his view. With a breath-stilling shock, Paul recognized the viewpoint. It was that of one of his children! He was seeing Scytale’s knife hand from within the creche! It glittered only inches from him. Yes—and he could see himself across the room, as well—head down, standing quietly, a figure of no menace, ignored by the others in this room.

  “To begin, you might assign us all your CHOAM holdings,” Scytale suggested.

  “All of them?” Alia protested.

  “All.”

  Watching himself through the eyes in the creche, Paul slipped his crysknife from its belt sheath. The movement produced a strange sensation of duality. He measured the distance, the angle. There’d be no second chance. He prepared his body then in the Bene Gesserit way, armed himself like a cocked spring for a single concentrated movement, a prajna thing requiring all his muscles balanced in one exquisite unity.

  The crysknife leaped from his hand. The milky blur of it flashed into Scytale’s right eye, jerked the Face Dancer’s head back. Scytale threw both hands up and staggere
d backward against the wall. His knife clattered off the ceiling, to hit the floor. Scytale rebounded from the wall; he fell face forward, dead before he touched the floor.

  Still through the eyes in the creche, Paul watched the faces in the room turn toward his eyeless figure, read the combined shock. Then Alia rushed to the creche, bent over it and hid the view from him.

  “Oh, they’re safe,” Alia said. “They’re safe.”

  “M’Lord,” Idaho whispered, “was that part of your vision?”

  “No.” He waved a hand in Idaho’s direction. “Let it be.”

  “Forgive me, Paul,” Alia said. “But when that creature said they could … revive …”

  “There are some prices an Atreides cannot pay,” Paul said. “You know that.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “But I was tempted …”

  “Who was not tempted?” Paul asked.

  He turned away from them, groped his way to a wall, leaned against it and tried to understand what he had done. How? How? The eyes in the creche! He felt poised on the brink of terrifying revelation.

  “My eyes, father.”

  The word-shapings shimmered before his sightless vision.

  “My son!” Paul whispered, too low for any to hear. “You’re … aware.”

  “Yes, father. Look!”

  Paul sagged against the wall in a spasm of dizziness. He felt that he’d been upended and drained. His own life whipped past him. He saw his father. He was his father. And the grandfather, and the grand-fathers before that. His awareness tumbled through a mind-shattering corridor of his whole male line.

  “How?” he asked silently.

  Faint word-shapings appeared, faded and were gone, as though the strain was too great. Paul wiped saliva from the corner of his mouth. He remembered the awakening of Alia in the Lady Jessica’s womb. But there had been no Water of Life, no overdose of melange this time … or had there? Had Chani’s hunger been for that? Or was this somehow the genetic product of his line, foreseen by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam?

  Paul felt himself in the creche then, with Alia cooing over him. Her hands soothed him. Her face loomed, a giant thing directly over him. She turned him then and he saw his creche companion—a girl with that bony-ribbed look of strength which came from a desert heritage. She had a full head of tawny red hair. As he stared, she opened her eyes. Those eyes! Chani peered out of her eyes … and the Lady Jessica. A multitude peered out of those eyes.