"In the direct path--on the landing field and across the spice storage yards of the plain--extensive damage," Gurney said. "As much from battle as from the storm."
"Nothing money won't repair, I presume," Paul said.
"Except for the lives, m'Lord," Gurney said, and there was a tone of reproach in his voice as though to say: "When did an Atreides worry first about things when people were at stake?"
But Paul could only focus his attention on the inner eye and the gaps visible to him in the time-wall that still lay across his path. Through each gap the jihad raged away down the corridors of the future.
He sighed, crossed the hall, seeing a chair against the wall. The chair had once stood in the dining hall and might even have held his own father. At the moment, though, it was only an object to rest his weariness and conceal it from the men. He sat down, pulling his robes around his legs, loosening his stillsuit at the neck.
"The Emperor is still holed up in the remains of his ship," Gurney said.
"For now, contain him there," Paul said. "Have they found the Harkonnens yet?"
"They're still examining the dead."
"What reply from the ships up there?" He jerked his chin toward the ceiling.
"No reply yet, m'Lord."
Paul sighed, resting against the back of his chair. Presently, he said: "Bring me a captive Sardaukar. We must send a message to our Emperor. It's time to discuss terms."
"Yes, m'Lord."
Gurney turned away, dropped a hand signal to one of the Fedaykin who took up close-guard position beside Paul.
"Gurney," Paul whispered. "Since we've been rejoined I've yet to hear you produce the proper quotation for the event." He turned, saw Gurney swallow, saw the sudden grim hardening of the man's jaw.
"As you wish, m'Lord," Gurney said. He cleared his throat, rasped: "'And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people: for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son.' "
Paul closed his eyes, forcing grief out of his mind, letting it wait as he had once waited to mourn his father. Now, he gave his thoughts over to this day's accumulated discoveries--the mixed futures and the hidden presence of Alia within his awareness.
Of all the uses of time-vision, this was the strangest. "I have breasted the future to place my words where only you can hear them," Alia had said. "Even you cannot do that, my brother. I find it an interesting play. And ... oh, yes--I've killed our grandfather, the demented old Baron. He had very little pain."
Silence. His time sense had seen her withdrawal.
"Muad'Dib."
Paul opened his eyes to see Stilgar's black-bearded visage above him, the dark eyes glaring with battle light.
"You've found the body of the old Baron," Paul said.
A hush of the person settled over Stilgar. "How could you know?" he whispered. "We just found the body in that great pile of metal the Emperor built."
Paul ignored the question, seeing Gurney return accompanied by two Fremen who supported a captive Sardaukar.
"Here's one of them, m'Lord," Gurney said. He signed to the guard to hold the captive five paces in front of Paul.
The Sardaukar's eyes, Paul noted, carried a glazed expression of shock. A blue bruise stretched from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his mouth. He was of the blond, chisel-featured caste, the look that seemed synonymous with rank among the Sardaukar, yet there were no insignia on his torn uniform except the gold buttons with the Imperial crest and the tattered braid of his trousers.
"I think this one's an officer, m'Lord," Gurney said.
Paul nodded, said: "I am the Duke Paul Atreides. Do you understand that, man?"
The Sardaukar stared at him unmoving.
"Speak up," Paul said, "or your Emperor may die."
The man blinked, swallowed.
"Who am I?" Paul demanded.
"You are the Duke Paul Atreides," the man husked.
He seemed too submissive to Paul, but then the Sardaukar had never been prepared for such happenings as this day. They'd never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program.
"I have a message for you to carry to the Emperor," Paul said. And he couched his words in the ancient formula: "I, a Duke of a Great House, an Imperial Kinsman, give my word of bond under the Convention. If the Emperor and his people lay down their arms and come to me here I will guard their lives with my own." Paul held up his left hand with the ducal signet for the Sardaukar to see. "I swear it by this."
The man wet his lips with his tongue, glanced at Gurney.
"Yes," Paul said. "Who but an Atreides could command the allegiance of Gurney Halleck."
"I will carry the message," the Sardaukar said.
"Take him to our forward command post and send him in," Paul said.
"Yes, m'Lord." Gurney motioned for the guard to obey, led them out.
Paul turned back to Stilgar.
"Chani and your mother have arrived," Stilgar said. "Chani has asked time to be alone with her grief. The Reverend Mother sought a moment in the weirding room; I know not why."
"My mother's sick with longing for a planet she may never see," Paul said. "Where water falls from the sky and plants grow so thickly you cannot walk between them."
"Water from the sky," Stilgar whispered.
In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.
I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.
In a rush of loneliness, Paul glanced around the room, noting how proper and on-review his guards had become in his presence. He sensed the subtle, prideful competition among them--each hoping for notice from Muad'Dib.
Muad'Dib from whom all blessingsflow,he thought, and it was the bitterest thought of his life. They sense that I must take the throne, he thought. But they cannot know I do it to prevent the jihad.
Stilgar cleared his throat, said: "Rabban, too, is dead."
Paul nodded.
Guards to the right suddenly snapped aside, standing at attention to open an aisle for Jessica. She wore her black aba and walked with a hint of striding across sand, but Paul noted how this house had restored to her something of what she had once been here--concubine to a ruling duke. Her presence carried some of its old assertiveness.
Jessica stopped in front of Paul, looked down at him. She saw his fatigue and how he hid it, but found no compassion for him. It was as though she had been rendered incapable of any emotion for her son.
Jessica had entered the Great Hall wondering why the place refused to fit itself snugly in to her memories. It remained a foreign room, as though she had never walked here, never walked here with her beloved Leto, never confronted a drunken Duncan Idaho here--never, never, never....
There should be a word-tension directly opposite to adab, the demanding memory, she thought. There should be a word for memories that deny themselves.
"Where is Alia?" she asked.
"Out doing what any good Fremen child should be doing in such times," Paul said. "She's killing enemy wounded and marking their bodies for the water-recovery teams."
"Paul!"
"You must understand that she does this out of kindness," he said. "Isn't it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty?"
Jessica glared at her son, shocked by the profound change in him. Was it his child's death did this? she wondered. And she said: "The men tell strange stories of you, Paul. They say you've all the powers of the legend--nothing can be hidden from you, that you see where others cannot see."
"A Bene Gesserit should ask about legends?" he asked.
"I've had a hand in whatever you are," she admitted, "but you mustn't expect me to--"
"How would you like to live billions upon billions of li
ves?" Paul asked. "There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on hate. How can you tell what's ruthless unless you've plumbed the depths of both cruelty and kindness? You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach."
Jessica tried to swallow in a dry throat. Presently, she said: "Once you denied to me that you were the Kwisatz Haderach."
Paul shook his head. "I can deny nothing any more." He looked up into her eyes. "The Emperor and his people come now. They will be announced any moment. Stand beside me. I wish a clear view of them. My future bride will be among them."
"Paul!" Jessica snapped. "Don't make the mistake your father made!"
"She's a princess," Paul said. "She's my key to the throne, and that's all she'll ever be. Mistake? You think because I'm what you made me that I cannot feel the need for revenge?"
"Even on the innocent?" she asked, and she thought: He must not make the mistakes I made.
"There are no innocent any more," Paul said.
"Tell that to Chani," Jessica said, and gestured toward the passage from the rear of the Residency.
Chani entered the Great Hall there, walking between the Fremen guards as though unaware of them. Her hood and stillsuit cap were thrown back, face mask fastened aside. She walked with a fragile uncertainty as she crossed the room to stand beside Jessica.
Paul saw the marks of tears on her cheeks--She gives water to the dead. He felt a pang of grief strike through him, but it was as though he could only feel this thing through Chani's presence.
"He is dead, beloved," Chani said. "Our son is dead."
Holding himself under stiff control, Paul got to his feet. He reached out, touched Chani's cheek, feeling the dampness of her tears. "He cannot be replaced," Paul said, "but there will be other sons. It is Usul who promises this." Gently, he moved her aside, gestured to Stilgar.
"Muad'Dib," Stilgar said.
"They come from the ship, the Emperor and his people," Paul said. "I will stand here. Assemble the captives in an open space in the center of the room. They will be kept at a distance of ten meters from me unless I command otherwise."
"As you command, Muad'Dib."
As Stilgar turned to obey, Paul heard the awed muttering of Fremen guards: "You see? He knew! No one told him, but he knew!"
The Emperor's entourage could be heard approaching now, his Sardaukar humming one of their marching tunes to keep up their spirits. There came a murmur of voices at the entrance and Gurney Halleck passed through the guard, crossed to confer with Stilgar, then moved to Paul's side, a strange look in his eyes.
Will I lose Gurney, too? Paul wondered. The way I lost Stilgar --losing afriendto gain a creature?
"They have no throwing weapons," Gurney said. "I've made sure of that myself." He glanced around the room, seeing Paul's preparations. "Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen is with them. Shall I cut him out?"
"Leave him."
"There're some Guild people, too, demanding special privileges, threatening an embargo against Arrakis. I told them I'd give you their message."
"Let them threaten."
"Paul!" Jessica hissed behind him. "He's talking about the Guild!"
"I'll pull their fangs presently," Paul said.
And he thought then about the Guild--the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword... and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they'd existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died.
The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.
Let them look closely at their new host, Paul thought.
"There's also a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who says she's a friend of your mother," Gurney said.
"My mother has no Bene Gesserit friends."
Again, Gurney glanced around the Great Hall, then bent close to Paul's ear. "Thufir Hawat's with 'em, m'Lord. I had no chance to see him alone, but he used our old hand signs to say he's been working with the Harkonnens, thought you were dead. Says he's to be left among 'em."
"You left Thufir among those--"
"He wanted it ... and I thought it best. If ... there's something wrong, he's where we can control him. If not--we've an ear on the other side."
Paul thought then of prescient glimpses into the possibilities of this moment--and one time-line where Thufir carried a poisoned needle which the Emperor commanded he use against "this upstart Duke."
The entrance guards stepped aside, formed a short corridor of lances. There came a murmurous swish of garments, feet rasping the sand that had drifted into the Residency.
The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV led his people into the hall. His burseg helmet had been lost and the red hair stood out in disarray. His uniform's left sleeve had been ripped along the inner seam. He was beltless and without weapons, but his presence moved with him like a force-shield bubble that kept his immediate area open.
A Fremen lance dropped across his path, stopped him where Paul had ordered. The others bunched up behind, a montage of color, of shuffling and of staring faces.
Paul swept his gaze across the group, saw women who hid signs of weeping, saw the lackeys who had come to enjoy grandstand seats at a Sardaukar victory and now stood choked to silence by defeat. Paul saw the bird-bright eyes of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam glaring beneath her black hood, and beside her the narrow furtiveness of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.
There's a face time betrayed to me, Paul thought.
He looked beyond Feyd-Rautha then, attracted by a movement, seeing there a narrow, weaselish face he'd never before encountered--not in time or out of it. It was a face he felt he should know and the feeling carried with it a marker of fear.
Why should I fear that man? he wondered.
He leaned toward his mother, whispered: "That man to the left of the Reverend Mother, the evil-looking one--who is that?"
Jessica looked, recognizing the face from her Duke's dossiers. "Count Fenring," she said. "The one who was here immediately before us. A genetic-eunuch ... and a killer."
The Emperor's errand boy, Paul thought. And the thought was a shock crashing across his consciousness because he had seen the Emperor in uncounted associations spread through the possible futures--but never once had Count Fenring appeared within those prescient visions.
It occurred to Paul then that he had seen his own dead body along countless reaches of the time web, but never once had he seen his moment of death.
Have I been denied a glimpse of this man because he is the one who kills me? Paul wondered.
The thought sent a pang of foreboding through him. He forced his attention away from Fenring, looked now at the remnants of Sardaukar men and officers, the bitterness on their faces and the desperation. Here and there among them, faces caught Paul's attention briefly: Sardaukar officers measuring the preparations within this room, planning and scheming yet for a way to turn defeat into victory.
Paul's attention came at last to a tall blonde woman, green-eyed, a face of patrician beauty, classic in its hauteur, untouched by tears, completely undefeated. Without being told it, Paul knew her--Princess Royal, Bene Gesserit-trained, a face that time vision had shown him in many aspects: Irulan.
There's my key, he thought.
Then he saw movement in the clustered people, a face and figure emerged--Thufir Hawat, the seamed old features with darkly stained lips, the hunched shoulders, the look of fragile age about him.
"There's Thufir Hawat," Paul said. "Let him stand free, Gurney."
"M'Lord," Gurney said.
"Let him stand free," Paul repeated.
Gurney nodded.
Hawat shambled forward as a Fremen lance was lifted and replaced behind him. The rheumy eyes peered at Paul, measuring, seeking.
Paul stepped forward one pace, sensed the tense, waiting movement of the Emperor and his people.
Hawat's gaze stabbed past Paul, and the old man said: "Lady Jessica, I but learned this day how I've wronged you in my thoughts. You needn't forgive."
Paul waited, but his mother remained silent.
"Thufir, old friend," Paul said, "as you can see, my back is toward no door."
"The universe is full of doors," Hawat said.
"Am I my father's son?" Paul asked.
"More like your grandfather's," Hawat rasped. "You've his manner and the look of him in your eyes."
"Yet I'm my father's son," Paul said. "For I say to you, Thufir, that in payment for your years of service to my family you may now ask anything you wish of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours." Paul stepped forward a pace, hands at his side, seeing the look of awareness grow in Hawat's eyes.
He realizes that I know of the treachery, Paul thought.
Pitching his voice to carry in a half-whisper for Hawat's ears alone, Paul said: "I mean this, Thufir. If you're to strike me, do it now."
"I but wanted to stand before you once more, my Duke," Hawat said. And Paul became aware for the first time of the effort the old man exerted to keep from falling. Paul reached out, supported Hawat by the shoulders, feeling the muscle tremors beneath his hands.
"Is there pain, old friend?" Paul asked.
"There is pain, my Duke," Hawat agreed, "but the pleasure is greater." He half turned in Paul's arms, extended his left hand, palm up, toward the Emperor, exposing the tiny needle cupped against the fingers. "See, Majesty?" he called. "See your traitor's needle? Did you think that I who've given my life to service of the Atreides would give them less now?"
Paul staggered as the old man sagged in his arms, felt the death there, the utter flaccidity. Gently, Paul lowered Hawat to the floor, straightened and signed for guardsmen to carry the body away.
Silence held the hall while his command was obeyed.
A look of deadly waiting held the Emperor's face now. Eyes that had never admitted fear admitted it at last.
"Majesty," Paul said, and noted the jerk of surprised attention in the tall Princess Royal. The words had been uttered with the Bene Gesserit controlled atonals, carrying in it every shade of contempt and scorn that Paul could put there.
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