沙丘2

CHAPTER 6

How do we approach the study of Muad‘Dib’s father? A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there—aman snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?

—from“Muad’Dib, Family Commentaries”by the Princess Irulan

PAUL WATCHED his father enter the training room, saw the guards take up stations outside. One of them closed the door. As always, Paul experienced a sense of presence in his father, someone totally here.

The Duke was tall, olive-skinned. His thin face held harsh angles warmed only by deep gray eyes. He wore a black working uniform with red armorial hawk crest at the breast. A silvered shield belt with the patina of much use girded his narrow waist.

The Duke said: “Hard at work, Son?” He crossed to the ell table, glanced at the papers on it, swept his gaze around the room and back to Paul. He felt tired, filled with the ache of not showing his fatigue. I must use every opportunity to rest during the crossing to Arrakis, he thought. There’ll be no rest on Arrakis.

“Not very hard,”Paul said. “Everything’s so….”He shrugged.

“Yes. Well, tomorrow we leave. It’ll be good to get settled in our new home, put all this upset behind.” Paul nodded, suddenly overcome by memory of the Reverend Mother’s words: “…for the father, nothing.”

“Father,”Paul said, “will Arrakis be as dangerous as everyone says?” The Duke forced himself to the casual gesture, sat down on a corner of the table, smiled. A whole pattern of conversation welled up in his mind—the kind of thing he might use to dispel the vapors in his men before a battle. The pattern froze before it could be vocalized, confronted by the single thought: This is my son.

“It’ll be dangerous,”he admitted.

“Hawat tells me we have a plan for the Fremen,”Paul said. And he wondered: Why don’t I tell him what that old woman said? How did she seal my tongue? The Duke noted his son’s distress, said: “As always, Hawat sees the main chance. But there’s much more. I see also the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles—the CHOAM Company. By giving me Arrakis, His Majesty is forced to give us a CHOAM directorship … a subtle gain.”

“CHOAM controls the spice,”Paul said.

“And Arrakis with its spice is our avenue into CHOAM,”the Duke said.

“There’s more to CHOAM than melange.”

“Did the Reverend Mother warn you?”Paul blurted. He clenched his fists, feeling his palms slippery with perspiration. The effort it had taken to ask that question.

“Hawat tells me she frightened you with warnings about Arrakis,”the Duke said. “Don’t let a woman’s fears cloud your mind. No woman wants her loved ones endangered. The hand behind those warnings was your mother’s. Take this as a sign of her love for us.”

“Does she know about the Fremen?”

“Yes, and about much more.”

“What?” And the Duke thought: The truth could be worse than he imagines, but even dangerous facts arevaluable if you’ve been trained to deal with them. And there’s one place where nothing has been spared for my son—dealingwith dangerous facts. This must be leavened, though; he is young.

“Few products escape the CHOAM touch,”the Duke said. “Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur—the most prosaic and the most exotic … even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richesse and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties.”

“And now we control it?”

“To a certain degree. But the important thing is to consider all the Houses that depend on CHOAM profits. And think of the enormous proportion of those profits dependent upon a single product—the spice. Imagine what would happen if something should reduce spice production.”

“Whoever had stockpiled melange could make a killing,”Paul said. “Others would be out in the cold.” The Duke permitted himself a moment of grim satisfaction, looking at his son and thinking how penetrating, how truly educated that observation had been.

He nodded. “The Harkonnens have been stockpiling for more than twenty years.”

“They mean spice production to fail and you to be blamed.”

“They wish the Atreides name to become unpopular,”the Duke said. “Think of the Landsraad Houses that look to me for a certain amount of leadership— their unofficial spokesman. Think how they’d react if I were responsible for a serious reduction in their income. After all, one’s own profits come first. The Great Convention be damned! You can’t let someone pauperize you!”A harsh smile twisted the Duke’s mouth. “They’d look the other way no matter what was done to me.”

“Even if we were attacked with atomics?”

“Nothing that flagrant. No open defiance of the Convention. But almost anything else short of that … perhaps even dusting and a bit of soil poisoning.”

“Then why are we walking into this?”

“Paul!”The Duke frowned at his son. “Knowing where the trap is—that’s the first step in evading it. This is like single combat, Son, only on a larger scale —a feint within a feint within a feint … seemingly without end. The task is to unravel it. Knowing that the Harkonnens stockpile melange, we ask another question: Who else is stockpiling? That’s the list of our enemies.”

“Who?”

“Certain Houses we knew were unfriendly and some we’d thought friendly.

We need not consider them for the moment because there is one other much more important: our beloved Padishah Emperor.” Paul tried to swallow in a throat suddenly dry. “Couldn’t you convene the Landsraad, expose—”

“Make our enemy aware we know which hand holds the knife? Ah, now, Paul—we see the knife, now. Who knows where it might be shifted next? If we put this before the Landsraad it’d only create a great cloud of confusion. The Emperor would deny it. Who could gainsay him? All we’d gain is a little time while risking chaos. And where would the next attack come from?”

“All the Houses might start stockpiling spice.”

“Our enemies have a head start—too much of a lead to overcome.”

“The Emperor,”Paul said. “That means the Sardaukar.”

“Disguised in Harkonnen livery, no doubt,”the Duke said. “But the soldier fanatics nonetheless.”

“How can Fremen help us against Sardaukar?”

“Did Hawat talk to you about Salusa Secundus?”

“The Emperor’s prison planet? No.”

“What if it were more than a prison planet, Paul? There’s a question you never hear asked about the Imperial Corps of Sardaukar: Where do they come from?”

“From the prison planet?”

“They come from somewhere.”

“But the supporting levies the Emperor demands from—”

“That’s what we’re led to believe: they’re just the Emperor’s levies trained young and superbly. You hear an occasional muttering about the Emperor’s training cadres, but the balance of our civilization remains the same: the military forces of the Landsraad Great Houses on one side, the Sardaukar and their supporting levies on the other. And their supporting levies, Paul. The Sardaukar remain the Sardaukar.”

“But every report on Salusa Secundus says S.S. is a hell world!”

“Undoubtedly. But if you were going to raise tough, strong, ferocious men, what environmental conditions would you impose on them?”

“How could you win the loyalty of such men?”

“There are proven ways: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. It can be done. It has been done on many worlds in many times.” Paul nodded, holding his attention on his father’s face. He felt some revelation impending.

“Consider Arrakis,”the Duke said. “When you get outside the towns and garrison villages, it’s every bit as terrible a place as Salusa Secundus.” Paul’s eyes went wide. “The Fremen!”

“We have there the potential of a corps as strong and deadly as the Sardaukar. It’ll require patience to exploit them secretly and wealth to equip them properly. But the Fremen are there … and the spice wealth is there. You see now why we walk into Arrakis, knowing the trap is there.”

“Don’t the Harkonnens know about the Fremen?”

“The Harkonnens sneered at the Fremen, hunted them for sport, never even bothered trying to count them. We know the Harkonnen policy with planetary populations—spend as little as possible to maintain them.” The metallic threads in the hawk symbol above his father’s breast glistened as the Duke shifted his position. “You see?”

“We’re negotiating with the Fremen right now,”Paul said.

“I sent a mission headed by Duncan Idaho,”the Duke said. “A proud and ruthless man, Duncan, but fond of the truth. I think the Fremen will admire him.

If we’re lucky, they may judge us by him: Duncan, the moral.”

“Duncan, the moral,”Paul said, “and Gurney the valorous.”

“You name them well,”the Duke said.

And Paul thought: Gurney’s one of those the Reverend Mother meant, a supporter of worlds—“… the valor of the brave. ”

“Gurney tells me you did well in weapons today,”the Duke said.

“That isn’t what he told me.” The Duke laughed aloud. “I figured Gurney to be sparse with his praise. He says you have a nicety of awareness—in his own words—of the difference between a blade’s edge and its tip.”

“Gurney says there’s no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge.”

“Gurney’s a romantic,”the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. “I’d sooner you never had to kill … but if the need arises, you do it however you can—tip or edge.”He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming.

Seeing the direction of his father’s stare, Paul thought of the wet skies out there—a thing never to be seen on Arrakis from all accounts—and this thought of skies put him in mind of the space beyond. “Are the Guild ships really big?” he asked.

The Duke looked at him. “This will be your first time off planet,”he said.

“Yes, they’re big. We’ll be riding a Heighliner because it’s a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner—we’ll be just a small part of the ship’s manifest.”

“And we won’t be able to leave our frigates?”

“That’s part of the price you pay for Guild Security. There could be Harkonnen ships right alongside us and we’d have nothing to fear from them.

The Harkonnens know better than to endanger their shipping privileges.”

“I’m going to watch our screens and try to see a Guildsman.”

“You won’t. Not even their agents ever see a Guildsman. The Guild’s as jealous of its privacy as it is of its monopoly. Don’t do anything to endanger our shipping privileges, Paul.”

“Do you think they hide because they’ve mutated and don’t look … human anymore?”

“Who knows?”The Duke shrugged. “It’s a mystery we’re not likely to solve.

We’ve more immediate problems—among them: you.”

“Me?”

“Your mother wanted me to be the one to tell you, Son. You see, you may have Mentat capabilities.” Paul stared at his father, unable to speak for a moment, then: “A Mentat? Me? But I….”

“Hawat agrees, Son. It’s true.”

“But I thought Mentat training had to start during infancy and the subject couldn’t be told because it might inhibit the early….”He broke off, all his past circumstances coming to focus in one flashing computation. “I see,”he said.

“A day comes,”the Duke said, “when the potential Mentat must learn what’s being done. It may no longer be done to him. The Mentat has to share in the choice of whether to continue or abandon the training. Some can continue; some are incapable of it. Only the potential Mentat can tell this for sure about himself.” Paul rubbed his chin. All the special training from Hawat and his mother— the mnemonics, the focusing of awareness, the muscle control and sharpening of sensitivities, the study of languages and nuances of voices—all of it clicked into a new kind of understanding in his mind.

“You’ll be the Duke someday, Son,”his father said. “A Mentat Duke would be formidable indeed. Can you decide now … or do you need more time?” There was no hesitation in his answer. “I’ll go on with the training.”

“Formidable indeed,”the Duke murmured, and Paul saw the proud smile on his father’s face. The smile shocked Paul: it had a skull look on the Duke’s narrow features. Paul closed his eyes, feeling the terrible purpose reawaken within him. Perhaps being a Mentat is terrible purpose, he thought.

But even as he focused on this thought, his new awareness denied it.

CHAPTER 4

Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and—of course—the Duke Leto, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.

—from“A Child’s History of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

THUFIR HAWAT slipped into the training room of Castle Caladan, closed the door softly. He stood there a moment, feeling old and tired and stormleathered. His left leg ached where it had been slashed once in the service of the Old Duke.

Three generations of them now, he thought.

He stared across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through the skylights, saw the boy seated with back to the door, intent on papers and charts spread across an ell table.

How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door? Hawat cleared his throat.

Paul remained bent over his studies.

A cloud shadow passed over the skylights. Again, Hawat cleared his throat.

Paul straightened, spoke without turning: “I know. I’m sitting with my back to a door.” Hawat suppressed a smile, strode across the room.

Paul looked up at the grizzled old man who stopped at a corner of the table.

Hawat’s eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.

“I heard you coming down the hall,” Paul said. “And I heard you open the door.”

“The sounds I make could be imitated.”

“I’d know the difference.” He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-mother of his is giving him the deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that? Maybe that’s why they sent the old Proctor here—towhip our dear Lady Jessica into line.

Hawat pulled up a chair across from Paul, sat down facing the door. He did it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck him as an odd place suddenly, a stranger-place with most of its hardware already gone off to Arrakis.

A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.

There stand I, Hawat thought.

“Thufir, what’re you thinking?” Paul asked.

Hawat looked at the boy. “I was thinking we’ll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again.”

“Does that make you sad?”

“Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.” He glanced at the charts on the table. “And Arrakis is just another place.”

“Did my father send you up to test me?” Hawat scowled—the boy had such observing ways about him. He nodded.

“You’re thinking it’d have been nicer if he’d come up himself, but you must know how busy he is. He’ll be along later.”

“I’ve been studying about the storms on Arrakis.”

“The storms. I see.”

“They sound pretty bad.”

“That’s too cautious a word: bad. Those storms build up across six or seven thousand kilometers of flatlands, feed on anything that can give them a push— coriolis force, other storms, anything that has an ounce of energy in it. They can blow up to seven hundred kilometers an hour, loaded with everything loose that’s in their way—sand, dust, everything. They can eat flesh off bones and etch the bones to slivers.”

“Why don’t they have weather control?”

“Arrakis has special problems, costs are higher, and there’d be maintenance and the like. The Guild wants a dreadful high price for satellite control and your father’s House isn’t one of the big rich ones, lad. You know that.”

“Have you ever seen the Fremen?” The lad’s mind is darting all over today, Hawat thought.

“Like as not I have seen them,” he said. “There’s little to tell them from the folk of the graben and sink. They all wear those great flowing robes. And they stink to heaven in any closed space. It’s from those suits they wear—call them ‘stulsuits’—that reclaim the body’s own water.” Paul swallowed, suddenly aware of the moisture in his mouth, remembering a dream of thirst. That people could want so for water they had to recycle their body moisture struck him with a feeling of desolation. “Water’s precious there,” he said.

Hawat nodded, thinking: Perhaps I’m doing it, getting across to him the importance of this planet as an enemy. It’s madness to go in there without that caution in our minds.

Paul looked up at the skylight, aware that it had begun to rain. He saw the spreading wetness on the gray meta-glass. “Water,” he said.

“You’ll learn a great concern for water,” Hawat said. “As the Duke’s son you’ll never want for it, but you’ll see the pressures of thirst all around you.” Paul wet his lips with his tongue, thinking back to the day a week ago and the ordeal with the Reverend Mother. She, too, had said something about water starvation.

“You’ll learn about the funeral plains,” she’d said, “about the wilderness that is empty, the wasteland where nothing lives except the spice and the sandworms.

You’ll stain your eyepits to reduce the sun glare. Shelter will mean a hollow out of the wind and hidden from view. You’ll ride upon your own two feet without ‘thopter or groundcar or mount.” And Paul had been caught more by her tone—singsong and wavering—than by her words.

“When you live upon Arrakis,” she had said, “khala, the land is empty. The moons will be your friends, the sun your enemy.” Paul had sensed his mother come up beside him away from her post guarding the door. She had looked at the Reverend Mother and asked: “Do you see no hope, Your Reverence?”

“Not for the father.” And the old woman had waved Jessica to silence, looked down at Paul. “Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “… the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “… without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!” A week had passed since that day with the Reverend Mother. Her words were only now beginning to come into full register. Now, sitting in the training room with Thufir Hawat, Paul felt a sharp pang of fear. He looked across at the Mentat’s puzzled frown.

“Where were you woolgathering that time?” Hawat asked.

“Did you meet the Reverend Mother?”

“That Truthsayer witch from the Imperium?” Hawat’s eyes quickened with interest. “I met her.”

“She….” Paul hesitated, found that he couldn’t tell Hawat about the ordeal.

The inhibitions went deep.

“Yes? What did she?” Paul took two deep breaths. “She said a thing.” He closed his eyes, calling up the words, and when he spoke his voice unconsciously took on some of the old woman’s tone: “ ‘You, Paul Atreides, descendant of kings, son of a Duke, you must learn to rule. It’s something none of your ancestors learned.’ ” Paul opened his eyes, said: “That made me angry and I said my father rules an entire planet.

And she said, ‘He’s losing it.’ And I said my father was getting a richer planet.

And she said. ‘He’ll lose that one, too.’ And I wanted to run and warn my father, but she said he’d already been warned—by you, by Mother, by many people.”

“True enough,” Hawat muttered.

“Then why’re we going?” Paul demanded.

“Because the Emperor ordered it. And because there’s hope in spite of what that witch-spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?” Paul looked down at his right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table.

Slowly, he willed the muscles to relax. She put some kind of hold on me, he thought. How? “She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,” Paul said. “And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do.” She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue.

“She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.”

“How’d she figure your father attracted men like Duncan and Gurney?” Hawat asked.

Paul shrugged. “Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears. And I said that’s what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life.” Hawat chuckled. “How’d that sit with her?” “I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy her.” He seems to be getting over it, Hawat thought, but that old witch frightened him. Why did she do it? “Thufir,” Paul said, “will Arrakis be as bad as she said?”

“Nothing could be that bad,” Hawat said and forced a smile. “Take those Fremen, for example, the renegade people of the desert. By first-approximation analysis, I can tell you there’re many, many more of them than the Imperium suspects. People live there, lad: a great many people, and….” Hawat put a sinewy finger beside his eye. “… they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion.

You must not breathe a word of this, lad. I tell you only as your father’s helper.”

“My father has told me of Salusa Secundus,” Paul said. “Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Arrakis … perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it.”

“We do not really know of Salusa Secundus today,” Hawat said. “Only what it was like long ago … mostly. But what is known—you’re right on that score.”

“Will the Fremen help us?”

“It’s a possibility.” Hawat stood up. “I leave today for Arrakis. Meanwhile, you take care of yourself for an old man who’s fond of you, heh? Come around here like the good lad and sit facing the door. It’s not that I think there’s any danger in the castle; it’s just a habit I want you to form.” Paul got to his feet, moved around the table. “You’re going today?”

“Today it is, and you’ll be following tomorrow. Next time we meet it’ll be on the soil of your new world.” He gripped Paul’s right arm at the bicep. “Keep your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge.” He released the arm, patted Paul’s shoulder, whirled and strode quickly to the door.

“Thufir!” Paul called.

Hawat turned, standing in the open doorway.

“Don’t sit with your back to any doors,” Paul said.

A grin spread across the seamed old face. “That I won’t, lad. Depend on it.” And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.

Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We’re leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now? The door across from Paul banged open and an ugly lump of a man lurched through it preceded by a handful of weapons.

“Well, Gurney Halleck,” Paul called, “are you the new weapons master?” Halleck kicked the door shut with one heel. “You’d rather I came to play games, I know,” he said. He glanced around the room, noting that Hawat’s men already had been over it, checking, making it safe for a duke’s heir. The subtle code signs were all around.

Paul watched the rolling, ugly man set himself back in motion, veer toward the training table with the load of weapons, saw the nine-string baliset slung over Gurney’s shoulder with the multipick woven through the strings near the head of the fingerboard.

Halleck dropped the weapons on the exercise table, lined them up—the rapiers, the bodkins, the kindjals, the slow-pellet stunners, the shield belts. The inkvine scar along his jawline writhed as he turned, casting a smile across the room.

“So you don’t even have a good morning for me, you young imp,” Halleck said. “And what barb did you sink in old Hawat? He passed me in the hall like a man running to his enemy’s funeral.” Paul grinned. Of all his father’s men, he liked Gurney Halleck best, knew the man’s moods and deviltry, his humors, and thought of him more as a friend than as a hired sword.

Halleck swung the baliset off his shoulder, began tuning it. “If y’ won’t talk, y’ won’t,” he said.

Paul stood, advanced across the room, calling out: “Well, Gurney, do we come prepared for music when it’s fighting time?”

“So it’s sass for our elders today,” Halleck said. He tried a chord on the instrument, nodded.

“Where’s Duncan Idaho?” Paul asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be teaching me weaponry?”

“Duncan’s gone to lead the second wave onto Arrakis,” Halleck said. “All you have left is poor Gurney who’s fresh out of fight and spoiling for music.” He struck another chord, listened to it, smiled.

“And it was decided in council that you being such a poor fighter we’d best teach you the music trade so’s you won’t waste your life entire.”

“Maybe you’d better sing me a lay then,” Paul said. “I want to be sure how not to do it.”

“Ah-h-h, hah!” Gurney laughed, and he swung into “Galacian Girls,” his multipick a blur over the strings as he sang: “Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls Will do it for pearls, And the Arrakeen for water! But if you desire dames Like consuming flames, Try a Caladanin daughter!”

“Not bad for such a poor hand with the pick,” Paul said, “but if my mother heard you singing a bawdy like that in the castle, she’d have your ears on the outer wall for decoration.” Gurney pulled at his left ear. “Poor decoration, too, they having been bruised so much listening at keyholes while a young lad I know practiced some strange ditties on his baliset.”

“So you’ve forgotten what it’s like to find sand in your bed,” Paul said. He pulled a shield belt from the table, buckled it fast around his waist. “Then, let’s fight!” Halleck’s eyes went wide in mock surprise. “So! It was your wicked hand did that deed! Guard yourself today, young master—guard yourself.” He grabbed up a rapier, laced the air with it. “I’m a hellfiend out for revenge!” Paul lifted the companion rapier, bent it in his hands, stood in the aguile, one foot forward. He let his manner go solemn in a comic imitation of Dr. Yueh.

“What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry,” Paul intoned. “This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded.” Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. “In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!” Paul snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield’s mindless defenses.

Halleck watched the action, turned at the last minute to let the blunted blade pass his chest. “Speed, excellent,” he said. “But you were wide open for an underhanded counter with a slip-tip.” Paul stepped back, chagrined.

“I should whap your backside for such carelessness,” Halleck said. He lifted a naked kindjal from the table and held it up. “This in the hand of an enemy can let out your life’s blood! You’re an apt pupil, none better, but I’ve warned you that not even in play do you let a man inside your guard with death in his hand.” “I guess I’m not in the mood for it today,” Paul said.

“Mood?” Halleck’s voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield’s filtering. “What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset.

It’s not for fighting.”

“I’m sorry, Gurney.”

“You’re not sorry enough!” Halleck activated his own shield, crouched with kindjal outthrust in left hand, the rapier poised high in his right. “Now I say guard yourself for true!” He leaped high to one side, then forward, pressing a furious attack.

Paul fell back, parrying. He felt the field crackling as shield edges touched and repelled each other, sensed the electric tingling of the contact along his skin.

What’s gotten into Gurney? he asked himself. He’s not faking this! Paul moved his left hand, dropped his bodkin into his palm from its wrist sheath.

“You see a need for an extra blade, eh?” Halleck grunted.

Is this betrayal? Paul wondered. Surely not Gurney! Around the room they fought—thrust and parry, feint and counter-feint. The air within their shield bubbles grew stale from the demands on it that the slow interchange along barrier edges could not replenish. With each new shield contact, the smell of ozone grew stronger.

Paul continued to back, but now he directed his retreat toward the exercise table. If I can turn him beside the table, I’ll show him a trick, Paul thought. One more step, Gurney.

Halleck took the step.

Paul directed a parry downward, turned, saw Halleck’s rapier catch against the table’s edge. Paul flung himself aside, thrust high with rapier and came in across Halleck’s neckline with the bodkin. He stopped the blade an inch from the jugular.

“Is this what you seek?” Paul whispered.

“Look down, lad,” Gurney panted.

Paul obeyed, saw Halleck’s kindjal thrust under the table’s edge, the tip almost touching Paul’s groin.

“We’d have joined each other in death,” Halleck said. “But I’ll admit you fought some better when pressed to it. You seemed to get the mood.” And he grinned wolfishly, the inkvine scar rippling along his jaw.

“The way you came at me,” Paul said. “Would you really have drawn my blood?” Halleck withdrew the kindjal, straightened. “If you’d fought one whit beneath your abilities, I’d have scratched you a good one, a scar you’d remember. I’ll not have my favorite pupil fall to the first Harkonnen tramp who happens along.” Paul deactivated his shield, leaned on the table to catch his breath. “I deserved that, Gurney. But it would’ve angered my father if you’d hurt me. I’ll not have you punished for my failing.”

“As to that,” Halleck said, “it was my failing, too. And you needn’t worry about a training scar or two. You’re lucky you have so few. As to your father— the Duke’d punish me only if I failed to make a first-class fighting man out of you. And I’d have been failing there if I hadn’t explained the fallacy in this mood thing you’ve suddenly developed.” Paul straightened, slipped his bodkin back into its wrist sheath.

“It’s not exactly play we do here,” Halleck said.

Paul nodded. He felt a sense of wonder at the uncharacteristic seriousness in Halleck’s manner, the sobering intensity. He looked at the beet-colored inkvine scar on the man’s jaw, remembering the story of how it had been put there by Beast Rabban in a Harkonnen slave pit on Giedi Prime. And Paul felt a sudden shame that he had doubted Halleck even for an instant. It occurred to Paul, then, that the making of Halleck’s scar had been accompanied by pain—a pain as intense, perhaps, as that inflicted by a Reverend Mother. He thrust this thought aside; it chilled their world.

“I guess I did hope for some play today,” Paul said. “Things are so serious around here lately.” Halleck turned away to hide his emotions. Something burned in his eyes.

There was pain in him—like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.

How soon this child must assume his manhood, Halleck thought. How soon he must read that form within his mind, that contract of brutal caution, to enter the necessary fact on the necessary line: “Please list your next of kin. ” Halleck spoke without turning: “I sensed the play in you, lad, and I’d like nothing better than to join in it. But this no longer can be play. Tomorrow we go to Arrakis. Arrakis is real. The Harkonnens are real.” Paul touched his forehead with his rapier blade held vertical.

Halleck turned, saw the salute and acknowledged it with a nod. He gestured to the practice dummy. “Now, we’ll work on your timing. Let me see you catch that thing sinister. I’ll control it from over here where I can have a full view of the action. And I warn you I’ll be trying new counters today. There’s a warning you’d not get from a real enemy.” Paul stretched up on his toes to relieve his muscles. He felt solemn with the sudden realization that his life had become filled with swift changes. He crossed to the dummy, slapped the switch on its chest with his rapier tip and felt the defensive field forcing his blade away.

“En garde!” Halleck called, and the dummy pressed the attack.

Paul activated his shield, parried and countered.

Halleck watched as he manipulated the controls. His mind seemed to be in two parts: one alert to the needs of the training fight, and the other wandering in fly-buzz.

I’m the well-trained fruit tree, he thought. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me-all bearing for someone else to pick.

For some reason, he recalled his younger sister, her elfin face so clear in his mind. But she was dead now—in a pleasure house for Harkonnen troops. She had loved pansies … or was it daisies? He couldn’t remember. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember.

Paul countered a slow swing of the dummy, brought up his left hand entretisser.

The clever little devil! Halleck thought, intent now on Paul’s interweaving hand motions. He’s been practicing and studying on his own. That’s not Duncan style, and it’s certainly nothing I’ve taught him.

This thought only added to Halleck’s sadness. I’m infected by mood, he thought. And he began to wonder about Paul, if the boy ever listened fearfully to his pillow throbbing in the night.

“If wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets,” he murmured.

It was his mother’s expression and he always used it when he felt the blackness of tomorrow on him. Then he thought what an odd expression that was to be taking to a planet that had never known seas or fishes.

CHAPTER 9

Many have marked the speed with which Muad‘Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed.

For the others, we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn.

And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad‘Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

—from “The Humanity of Muad’Dib”by thePrincess Irulan

PAUL LAY on the bed feigning sleep. It had been easy to palm Dr. Yueh’s sleeping tablet, to pretend to swallow it. Paul suppressed a laugh. Even his mother had believed him asleep. He had wanted to jump up and ask her permission to go exploring the house, but had realized she wouldn’t approve.

Things were too unsettled yet. No. This way was best.

If I slip out without asking I haven’t disobeyed orders. And Iwill stay in the house where it’s safe.

He heard his mother and Yueh talking in the other room. Their words were indistinct—something about the spice … the Harkonnens. The conversation rose and fell.

Paul’s attention went to the carved headboard of his bed—a false headboard attached to the wall and concealing the controls for this room’s functions. A leaping fish had been shaped on the wood with thick brown waves beneath it. He knew if he pushed the fish’s one visible eye that would turn on the room’s suspensor lamps. One of the waves, when twisted, controlled ventilation.

Another changed the temperature.

Quietly, Paul sat up in bed. A tall bookcase stood against the wall to his left.

It could be swung aside to reveal a closet with drawers along one side. The handle on the door into the hall was patterned on an ornithopter thrust bar.

It was as though the room had been designed to entice him.

The room and this planet.

He thought of the filmbook Yueh had shown him—“Arrakis: His Imperial Majesty’s Desert Botanical Testing Station.”It was an old filmbook from before discovery of the spice. Names flitted through Paul’s mind, each with its picture imprinted by the book’s mnemonic pulse: saguaro, burro bush, date palm, sand verbena, evening primrose, barrel cactus, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote bush … kit fox, desert hawk, kangaroo mouse….

Names and pictures, names and pictures from man’s terranic past—and many to be found now nowhere else in the universe except here on Arrakis.

So many new things to learn about—the spice.

And the sandworms.

A door closed in the other room. Paul heard his mother’s footsteps retreating down the hall. Dr. Yueh, he knew, would find something to read and remain in the other room.

Now was the moment to go exploring.

Paul slipped out of the bed, headed for the bookcase door that opened into the closet. He stopped at a sound behind him, turned. The carved headboard of the bed was folding down onto the spot where he had been sleeping. Paul froze, and immobility saved his life.

From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once—a common assassination weapon that every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some near-by hand and eye. It could burrow into moving flesh and chew its way up nerve channels to the nearest vital organ.

The seeker lifted, swung sideways across the room and back.

Through Paul’s mind flashed the related knowledge, the hunter-seeker limitations: Its compressed suspensor field distorted the room to reflect his target, the operator would be relying on motion—anything that moved. A shield could slow a hunter, give time to destroy it, but Paul had put aside his shield on the bed. Lasguns would knock them down, but lasguns were expensive and notoriously cranky of maintenance—and there was always the peril of explosive pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected a hot shield. The Atreides relied on their body shields and their wits.

Now, Paul held himself in near catatonic immobility, knowing he had only his wits to meet this threat.

The hunter-seeker lifted another half meter. It rippled through the slatted light from the window blinds, back and forth, quartering the room.

I must try to grab it, he thought. The suspensor field will make it slippery on the bottom. I must grip tightly.

The thing dropped a half meter, quartered to the left, circled back around the bed. A faint humming could be heard from it.

Who is operating that thing? Paul wondered. It has to be someone near. I could shout for Yueh, but it would take him the instant the door opened.

The hall door behind Paul creaked. A rap sounded there. The door opened.

The hunter-seeker arrowed past his head toward the motion.

Paul’s right hand shot out and down, gripping the deadly thing. It hummed and twisted in his hand, but his muscles were locked on it in desperation. With a violent turn and thrust, he slammed the thing’s nose against the metal doorplate.

He felt the crunch of it as the nose eye smashed and the seeker went dead in his hand.

Still, he held it—to be certain.

Paul’s eyes came up, met the open stare of total blue from the Shadout Mapes.

“Your father has sent for you,”she said. “There are men in the hall to escort you.” Paul nodded, his eyes and awareness focusing on this odd woman in a sacklike dress of bondsman brown. She was looking now at the thing clutched in his hand.

“I’ve heard of suchlike,”she said. “It would’ve killed me, not so?” He had to swallow before he could speak. “I … was its target.”

“But it was coming for me.”

“Because you were moving.”And he wondered: Who is this creature? “Then you saved my life,”she said.

“I saved both our lives.”

“Seems like you could’ve let it have me and made your own escape,”she said.

“Who are you?”he asked.

“The Shadout Mapes, housekeeper.” How did you know where to find me?”

“Your mother told me. I met her at the stairs to the weirding room down the hall.”She pointed to her right. “Your father’s men are still waiting.” Those will be Hawat’s men, he thought. We must find the operator of this thing.

“Go to my father’s men,”he said. “Tell them I’ve caught a hunter-seeker in the house and they’re to spread out and find the operator. Tell them to seal off the house and its grounds immediately. They’ll know how to go about it. The operator’s sure to be a stranger among us.” And he wondered: Could it be this creature? But he knew it wasn’t. The seeker had been under control when she entered.

“Before I do your bidding, manling,”Mapes said, “I must cleanse the way between us. You’ve put a water burden on me that I’m not sure I care to support.

But we Fremen pay our debts—be they black debts or white debts. And it’s known to us that you’ve a traitor in your midst. Who it is, we cannot say, but we’re certain sure of it. Mayhap there’s the hand guided that flesh-cutter.” Paul absorbed this in silence: a traitor. Before he could speak, the odd woman whirled away and ran back toward the entry.

He thought to call her back, but there was an air about her that told him she would resent it. She’d told him what she knew and now she was going to do his bidding. The house would be swarming with Hawat’s men in a minute.

His mind went to other parts of that strange conversation: weirding room. He looked to his left where she had pointed. We Fremen. So that was a Fremen. He paused for the mnemonic blink that would store the pattern of her face in his memory-prune-wrinkled features darkly browned, blue-on-blue eyes without any white in them. He attached the label: The Shadout Mapes.

Still gripping the shattered seeker, Paul turned back into his room, scooped up his shield belt from the bed with his left hand, swung it around his waist and buckled it as he ran back out and down the hall to the left.

She’d said his mother was someplace down here—stairs … a weirding room.

大家好，我是甜茶，

之前经历了美军入侵（拉灯二代反攻美帝国本土的故事上），我们少数民族蛰伏了很长时间，终于等到了美帝大统领视察伊拉克……

经过我们少数民族老一辈的生活经验，还有我们科学的测算，最终在美帝联合军队到达的时候，

就是我们的超级沙尘暴气象武器出场的时候，

好了，可以上核弹了，什么，没有nuclear weapon？？？

快去联系我老家那边，打这份电报（纸老虎！纸老虎！纸老虎！），放心，那边的人绝对懂我们的意思……

几封DF快递收货，打完收工……

既然美帝大统领落到我的手里面了，

美帝皇位归我了，

大统领你闺女也归我了，

从此就是我们伊拉克反攻美国，把绿旗插遍整个美帝本土的故事了……

CHAPTER 8

“Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!”goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!” —from“A Child’s History of Muad’Dib”by the Princess Irulan

THE DOOR stood ajar, and Jessica stepped through it into a room with yellow walls. To her left stretched a low settee of black hide and two empty bookcases, a hanging waterflask with dust on its bulging sides. To her right, bracketing another door, stood more empty bookcases, a desk from Caladan and three chairs. At the windows directly ahead of her stood Dr. Yueh, his back to her, his attention fixed upon the outside world.

Jessica took another silent step into the room.

She saw that Yueh’s coat was wrinkled, a white smudge near the left elbow as though he had leaned against chalk. He looked, from behind, like a fleshless stick figure in overlarge black clothing, a caricature poised for stringy movement at the direction of a puppet master. Only the squarish block of head with long ebony hair caught in its silver Suk School ring at the shoulder seemed alive— turning slightly to follow some movement outside.

Again, she glanced around the room, seeing no sign of her son, but the closed door on her right, she knew, let into a small bedroom for which Paul had expressed a liking.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Yueh,”she said. “Where’s Paul?” He nodded as though to something out the window, spoke in an absent manner without turning: “Your son grew tired, Jessica. I sent him into the next room to rest.” Abruptly, he stiffened, whirled with mustache flopping over his purpled lips.

“Forgive me, my Lady! My thoughts were far away … I … did not mean to be familiar.” She smiled, held out her right hand. For a moment, she was afraid he might kneel. “Wellington, please.”

“To use your name like that … I….”

“We’ve known each other six years,”she said. “It’s long past time formalities should’ve been dropped between us—in private.” Yueh ventured a thin smile, thinking: I believe it has worked. Now, she’ll think anything unusual in my manner is due to embarrassment. She’ll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.

“I’m afraid I was woolgathering,”he said. “Whenever I … feel especially sorry for you, I’m afraid I think of you as … well, Jessica.”

“Sorry for me? Whatever for?” Yueh shrugged. Long ago, he had realized Jessica was not gifted with the full Truthsay as his Wanna had been. Still, he always used the truth with Jessica whenever possible. It was safest.

“You’ve seen this place, my … Jessica.”He stumbled over the name, plunged ahead: “So barren after Caladan. And the people! Those townswomen we passed on the way here wailing beneath their veils. The way they looked at us.” She folded her arms across her breast, hugging herself, feeling the crysknife there, a blade ground from a sandworm’s tooth, if the reports were right. “It’s just that we’re strange to them—different people, different customs. They’ve known only the Harkonnens.”She looked past him out the windows. “What were you staring at out there?” He turned back to the window. “The people.” Jessica crossed to his side, looked to the left toward the front of the house where Yueh’s attention was focused. A line of twenty palm trees grew there, the ground beneath them swept clean, barren. A screen fence separated them from the road upon which robed people were passing. Jessica detected a faint shimmering in the air between her and the people—a house shield—and went on to study the passing throng, wondering why Yueh found them so absorbing.

The pattern emerged and she put a hand to her cheek. The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate … even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression.

“Do you know what they’re thinking?”Yueh asked.

“You profess to read minds?”she asked.

“Those minds,”he said. “They look at those trees and they think: ‘There are one hundred of us.’ That’s what they think.” She turned a puzzled frown on him. “Why?”

“Those are date palms,”he said. “One date palm requires forty liters of water a day. A man requires but eight liters. A palm, then, equals five men. There are twenty palms out there—one hundred men.”

“But some of those people look at the trees hopefully.”

“They but hope some dates will fall, except it’s the wrong season.”

“We look at this place with too critical an eye,”she said. “There’s hope as well as danger here. The spice could make us rich. With a fat treasury, we can make this world into whatever we wish.” And she laughed silently at herself: Who am I trying to convince? The laugh broke through her restraints, emerging brittle, without humor. “But you can’t buy security,”she said.

Yueh turned away to hide his face from her. If only it were possible to hate these people instead of love them! In her manner, in many ways, Jessica was like his Wanna. Yet that thought carried its own rigors, hardening him to his purpose.

The ways of the Harkonnen cruelty were devious. Wanna might not be dead. He had to be certain.

“Do not worry for us, Wellington,”Jessica said. “The problem’s ours, not yours.” She thinks I worry for her! He blinked back tears. And I do, of course. But I must stand before that black Baron with his deed accomplished, and take my one chance to strike him where he is weakest—in his gloating moment! He sighed.

“Would it disturb Paul if I looked in on him?”she asked.

“Not at all. I gave him a sedative.”

“He’s taking the change well?”she asked.

“Except for getting a bit overtired. He’s excited, but what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t be under these circumstances?”He crossed to the door, opened it.

“He’s in here.” Jessica followed, peered into a shadowy room.

Paul lay on a narrow cot, one arm beneath a light cover, the other thrown back over his head. Slatted blinds at a window beside the bed wove a loom of shadows across face and blanket.

Jessica stared at her son, seeing the oval shape of face so like her own. But the hair was the Duke’s—coal-colored and tousled. Long lashes concealed the lime-toned eyes. Jessica smiled, feeling her fears retreat. She was suddenly caught by the idea of genetic traces in her son’s features—her lines in eyes and facial outline, but sharp touches of the father peering through that outline like maturity emerging from childhood.

She thought of the boy’s features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns—endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. The thought made her want to kneel beside the bed and take her son in her arms, but she was inhibited by Yueh’s presence. She stepped back, closed the door softly.

Yueh had returned to the window, unable to bear watching the way Jessica stared at her son. Why did Wanna never give me children? he asked himself. I know as a doctor there was no physical reason against it. Was there some Bene Gesserit reason? Was she, perhaps, instructed to serve a different purpose?

What could it have been? She loved me, certainly.

For the first time, he was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp.

Jessica stopped beside him, said: “What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.” He spoke mechanically: “If only adults could relax like that.”

“Yes.”

“Where do we lose it?”he murmured.

She glanced at him, catching the odd tone, but her mind was still on Paul, thinking of the new rigors in his training here, thinking of the differences in his life now—so very different from the life they once had planned for him.

“We do, indeed, lose something,”she said.

She glanced out to the right at a slope humped with a wind-troubled graygreen of bushes—dusty leaves and dry claw branches. The too-dark sky hung over the slope like a blot, and the milky light of the Arrakeen sun gave the scene a silver cast—light like the crysknife concealed in her bodice.

“The sky’s so dark,”she said.

“That’s partly the lack of moisture,”he said.

“Water!”she snapped. “Everywhere you turn here, you’re involved with the lack of water!”

“It’s the precious mystery of Arrakis,”he said.

“Why is there so little of it? There’s volcanic rock here. There’re a dozen power sources I could name. There’s polar ice. They say you can’t drill in the desert—storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don’t get you first. They’ve never found water traces there, anyway.

But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells that’ve been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?”

“First a trickle, then nothing,”he said.

“But, Wellington, that’s the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?”

“It is curious,”he said. “You suspect some living agency? Wouldn’t that have shown in core samples?”

“What would have shown? Alien plant matter … or animal? Who could recognize it?”She turned back to the slope. “The water is stopped. Something plugs it. That’s my suspicion.”

“Perhaps the reason’s known,”he said. “The Harkonnens sealed off many sources of information about Arrakis. Perhaps there was reason to suppress this.”

“What reason?”she asked. “And then there’s the atmospheric moisture.

Little enough of it, certainly, but there’s some. It’s the major source of water here, caught in windtraps and precipitators. Where does that come from?”

“The polar caps?”

“Cold air takes up little moisture, Wellington. There are things here behind the Harkonnen veil that bear close investigation, and not all of those things are directly involved with the spice.”

“We are indeed behind the Harkonnen veil,”he said. “Perhaps we’ll….”He broke off, noting the sudden intense way she was looking at him. “Is something wrong?”

“The way you say ‘Harkonnen,’ ”she said. “Even my Duke’s voice doesn’t carry that weight of venom when he uses the hated name. I didn’t know you had personal reasons to hate them, Wellington.” Great Mother! he thought. I’ve aroused her suspicions! Now I must use every trick my Wanna taught me. There’s only one solution: tell the truth as far as I can.

He said: “You didn’t know that my wife, my Wanna….”He shrugged, unable to speak past a sudden constriction in his throat. Then: “They….”The words would not come out. He felt panic, closed his eyes tightly, experiencing the agony in his chest and little else until a hand touched his arm gently.

“Forgive me,”Jessica said. “I did not mean to open an old wound.”And she thought: Those animals! His wife was Bene Gesserit —the signs are all over him. And it’s obvious the Harkonnens killed her. Here’s another poor victim bound to the Atreides by a cherem of hate.

“I am sorry,”he said. “I’m unable to talk about it.”He opened his eyes, giving himself up to the internal awareness of grief. That, at least, was truth.

Jessica studied him, seeing the up-angled cheeks, the dark sequins of almond eyes, the butter complexion, and stringy mustache hanging like a curved frame around purpled lips and narrow chin. The creases of his cheeks and forehead, she saw, were as much lines of sorrow as of age. A deep affection for him came over her.

“Wellington, I’m sorry we brought you into this dangerous place,”she said.

“I came willingly,”he said. And that, too, was true.

“But this whole planet’s a Harkonnen trap. You must know that.”

“It will take more than a trap to catch the Duke Leto,”he said. And that, too, was true.

“Perhaps I should be more confident of him,”she said. “He is a brilliant tactician.”

“We’ve been uprooted,”he said. “That’s why we’re uneasy.”

“And how easy it is to kill the uprooted plant,”she said. “Especially when you put it down in hostile soil.”

“Are we certain the soil’s hostile?”

“There were water riots when it was learned how many people the Duke was adding to the population,”she said. “They stopped only when the people learned we were installing new windtraps and condensers to take care of the load.”

“There is only so much water to support human life here,”he said. “The people know if more come to drink a limited amount of water, the price goes up and the very poor die. But the Duke has solved this. It doesn’t follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”

“And guards,”she said. “Guards everywhere. And shields. You see the blurring of them everywhere you look. We did not live this way on Caladan.”

“Give this planet a chance,”he said.

But Jessica continued to stare hard-eyed out the window. “I can smell death in this place,”she said. “Hawat sent advance agents in here by the battalion.

Those guards outside are his men. The cargo handlers are his men. There’ve been unexplained withdrawals of large sums from the treasury. The amounts mean only one thing: bribes in high places.”She shook her head. “Where Thufir Hawat goes, death and deceit follow.”

“You malign him.”

“Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir’s methods.”

“You should … keep busy,”he said. “Give yourself no time for such morbid —”

“Busy! What is it that takes most of my time, Wellington? I am the Duke’s secretary—so busy that each day I learn new things to fear … things even he doesn’t suspect I know.”She compressed her lips, spoke thinly: “Sometimes I wonder how much my Bene Gesserit business training figured in his choice of me.”

“What do you mean?”He found himself caught by the cynical tone, the bitterness that he had never seen her expose.

“Don’t you think, Wellington,”she asked, “that a secretary bound to one by love is so much safer?”

“That is not a worthy thought, Jessica.” The rebuke came naturally to his lips. There was no doubt how the Duke felt about his concubine. One had only to watch him as he followed her with his eyes.

She sighed. “You’re right. It’s not worthy.” Again, she hugged herself, pressing the sheathed crysknife against her flesh and thinking of the unfinished business it represented.

“There’ll be much bloodshed soon,”she said. “The Harkonnens won’t rest until they’re dead or my Duke destroyed. The Baron cannot forget that Leto is a cousin of the royal blood—no matter what the distance—while the Harkonnen titles came out of the CHOAM pocketbook. But the poison in him, deep in his mind, is the knowledge that an Atreides had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin.”

“The old feud,”Yueh muttered. And for a moment he felt an acid touch of hate. The old feud had trapped him in its web, killed his Wanna or—worse—left her for Harkonnen tortures until her husband did their bidding. The old feud had trapped him and these people were part of that poisonous thing. The irony was that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.

“What are you thinking?”she asked.

“I am thinking that the spice brings six hundred and twenty thousand solaris the decagram on the open market right now. That is wealth to buy many things.”

“Does greed touch even you, Wellington?”

“Not greed.”

“What then?” He shrugged. “Futility.”He glanced at her. “Can you remember your first taste of spice?”

“It tasted like cinnamon.”

“But never twice the same,”he said. “It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”

“I think it would’ve been wiser for us to go renegade, to take ourselves beyond the Imperial reach,”she said.

He saw that she hadn’t been listening to him, focused on her words, wondering: Yes—why didn’t she make him do this? She could make him do virtually anything.

He spoke quickly because here was truth and a change of subject: “Would you think it bold of me … Jessica, if I asked a personal question?” She pressed against the window ledge in an unexplainable pang of disquiet.

“Of course not. You’re … my friend.”

“Why haven’t you made the Duke marry you?” She whirled, head up, glaring. “Made him marry me? But—”

“I should not have asked,”he said.

“No.”She shrugged. “There’s good political reason—as long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And….” She sighed. “… motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made him do … this, then it would not be his doing.”

“It’s a thing my Wanna might have said,”he murmured. And this, too, was truth. He put a hand to his mouth, swallowing convulsively. He had never been closer to speaking out, confessing his secret role.

Jessica spoke, shattering the moment. “Besides, Wellington, the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He’s charming, witty, considerate … tender—everything a woman could desire. But the other man is … cold, callous, demanding, selfish—as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That’s the man shaped by the father.”Her face contorted. “If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!” In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be heard fingering the blinds.

Presently, she took a deep breath, said, “Leto’s right—these rooms are nicer than the ones in the other sections of the house.”She turned, sweeping the room with her gaze. “If you’ll excuse me, Wellington, I want another look through this wing before I assign quarters.” He nodded. “Of course.”And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.

Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment, hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.

CHAPTER 5

YUEH (ya’ē), Wellington (weling- tun), Stdrd 10,082-10, 191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10, 112); md: WannaMarcus, B. G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides.(Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII Imperial Conditioning and Betrayal, The.)

—from“Dictionary of Muad’Dib”by thePrincess Irulan

ALTHOUGH HE heard Dr. Yueh enter the training room, noting the stiff deliberation of the man’s pace, Paul remained stretched out face down on the exercise table where the masseuse had left him. He felt deliciously relaxed after the workout with Gurney Halleck.

“You do look comfortable,”said Yueh in his calm, high-pitched voice.

Paul raised his head, saw the man’s stick figure standing several paces away, took in at a glance the wrinkled black clothing, the square block of a head with purple lips and drooping mustache, the diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning on his forehead, the long black hair caught in the Suk School’s silver ring at the left shoulder.

“You’ll be happy to hear we haven’t time for regular lessons today,”Yueh said. “Your father will be along presently.” Paul sat up.

“However, I’ve arranged for you to have a filmbook viewer and several lessons during the crossing to Arrakis.”

“Oh.” Paul began pulling on his clothes. He felt excitement that his father would be coming. They had spent so little time together since the Emperor’s command to take over the fief of Arrakis.

Yueh crossed to the ell table, thinking: How the boy has filled out these past few months. Such a waste! Oh, such a sad waste. And he reminded himself: I must not falter. What I do is done to be certain my Wanna no longer can be hurt by the Harkonnen beasts.

Paul joined him at the table, buttoning his jacket. “What’ll I be studying on the way across?”

“Ah-h-h, the terranic life forms of Arrakis. The planet seems to have opened its arms to certain terranic life forms. It’s not clear how. I must seek out the planetary ecologist when we arrive—a Dr. Kynes—and offer my help in the investigation.” And Yueh thought: What am I saying? I play the hypocrite even with myself.

“Will there be something on the Fremen?”Paul asked.

“The Fremen?”Yueh drummed his fingers on the table, caught Paul staring at the nervous motion, withdrew his hand.

“Maybe you have something on the whole Arrakeen population,”Paul said.

“Yes, to be sure,”Yueh said. “There are two general separations of the people—Fremen, they are one group, and the others are the people of the graben, the sink, and the pan. There’s some intermarriage, I’m told. The women of pan and sink villages prefer Fremen husbands; their men prefer Fremen wives. They have a saying: ‘Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.’ ”

“Do you have pictures of them?”

“I’ll see what I can get you. The most interesting feature, of course, is their eyes—totally blue, no whites in them.”

“Mutation?”

“No; it’s linked to saturation of the blood with melange.”

“The Fremen must be brave to live at the edge of that desert.”

“By all accounts,”Yueh said. “They compose poems to their knives. Their women are as fierce as the men. Even Fremen children are violent and dangerous. You’ll not be permitted to mingle with them, I daresay.” Paul stared at Yueh, finding in these few glimpses of the Fremen a power of words that caught his entire attention. What a people to win as allies! “And the worms?”Paul asked.

“What?”

“I’d like to study more about the sandworms.”

“Ah-h-h, to be sure. I’ve a filmbook on a small specimen, only one hundred and ten meters long and twenty-two meters in diameter. It was taken in the northern latitudes. Worms of more than four hundred meters in length have been recorded by reliable witnesses, and there’s reason to believe even larger ones exist.” Paul glanced down at a conical projection chart of the northern Arrakeen latitudes spread on the table. “The desert belt and south polar regions are marked uninhabitable. Is it the worms?”

“And the storms.”

“But any place can be made habitable.”

“If it’s economically feasible,”Yueh said. “Arrakis has many costly perils.” He smoothed his drooping mustache. “Your father will be here soon. Before I go, I’ve a gift for you, something I came across in packing.”He put an object on the table between them—black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul’s thumb.

Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.

“It’s a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system.”He picked it up, demonstrated. “The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge—thus, and the pages you’ve selected repel each other and the book opens.”

“It’s so small.”

“But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the edge—thus, and so … and the charge moves ahead one page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate.”He closed the book, handed it to Paul. “Try it.” Yueh watched Paul work the page adjustment, thought: I salve my own conscience. I give him the surcease of religion before betraying him. Thus may I say to myself that he has gone where I cannot go.

“This must’ve been made before filmbooks,”Paul said.

“It’s quite old. Let it be our secret, eh? Your parents might think it too valuable for one so young.” And Yueh thought: His mother would surely wonder at my motives.

“Well….”Paul closed the book, held it in his hand. “If it’s so valuable….”

“Indulge an old man’s whim,”Yueh said. “It was given to me when I was very young.”And he thought: I must catch his mind as well as his cupidity.

“Open it to four-sixty-seven K”alima—where it says: ‘From water does all life begin.’ There’s a slight notch on the edge of the cover to mark the place.” Paul felt the cover, detected two notches, one shallower than the other. He pressed the shallower one and the book spread open on his palm, its magnifier sliding into place.

“Read it aloud,”Yueh said.

Paul wet his lips with his tongue, read: ‘Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot—”

“Stop it!”Yueh barked.

Paul broke off, stared at him.

Yueh closed his eyes, fought to regain composure. What perversity caused the book to open at my Wanna’s favorite passage? He opened his eyes, saw Paul staring at him.

“Is something wrong?”Paul asked.

“I’m sorry,”Yueh said. “That was … my … dead wife’s favorite passage.

It’s not the one I intended you to read. It brings up memories that are … painful.”

“There are two notches,”Paul said.

Of course, Yueh thought. Wanna marked her passage. His fingers are more sensitive than mine andfoundher mark. It was an accident, no more.

“You may find the book interesting,”Yueh said. “It has much historical truth in it as well as good ethical philosophy.” Paul looked down at the tiny book in his palm—such a small thing. Yet, it contained a mystery … something had happened while he read from it. He had felt something stir his terrible purpose.

“Your father will be here any minute,”Yueh said. “Put the book away and read it at your leisure.” Paul touched the edge of it as Yueh had shown him. The book sealed itself.

He slipped it into his tunic. For a moment there when Yueh had barked at him, Paul had feared the man would demand the book’s return.

“I thank you for the gift, Dr. Yueh,”Paul said, speaking formally. “It will be our secret. If there is a gift of favor you wish from me, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“I … need for nothing,”Yueh said.

And he thought: Why do I stand here torturing myself? And torturing this poor lad … though he does not know it. Oeyh! Damn those Harkonnen beasts! Why did they choose mefortheir abomination?

毕生的梦想

这部电影的诞生有一些偶然性。

这一切始于2016年9月的威尼斯电影节。在为新电影《降临》接受媒体采访时，丹尼斯告诉记者，他毕生的梦想就是改编弗兰克·赫伯特的《沙丘》。这句话并没有被忽视，很快就被一些新闻媒体报道了。这个新闻故事突然激发出来的兴趣让我们开始讨论这本小说。他当时是这么告诉我的。

《沙丘》是一部了不起的小说，一本伟大的书。它是一个非常难改编的故事，因为它是一部史诗般的太空歌剧，充满了复杂的主题。在我还是个十几岁的少年时，我就对它十分着迷。我把所有相关的书都读了个遍。我家里就有《沙丘百科全书》。我的毕业戒指内侧刻着“穆阿迪布”这个词，我的毕业年鉴里甚至有《沙丘》的摘抄。我很喜欢它。

小说的中心主题由宗教和政治交织而成。这本书对流行文化产生了巨大的影响，对我这个电影导演来说也是如此。

你可以在《银翼杀手2049》中看到来自《沙丘》的灵感。更具体地说，是在尼安德·华莱士的办公室里。这种灵感体现在它的规模、风格和色彩上。我很想在沙漠中拍摄《沙丘》。沙漠恰好是全世界我最喜欢的地方。

两年半后，丹尼斯毕生的梦想将成为现实。

CHAPTER 7

With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant- legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition.

The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition- ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-a panoplia propheticus). And it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica’s latent abilities were grossly underestimated.

—from “Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis”by the Princess Irulan

(private circulation: B.G.file number AR-81088587) ALL AROUND the Lady Jessica—piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces—stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases—some partly unpacked. She could hear the cargo handlers from the Guild shuttle depositing another load in the entry.

Jessica stood in the center of the hall. She moved in a slow turn, looking up and around at shadowed carvings, crannies and deeply recessed windows. This giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Sisters’ Hall at her Bene Gesserit school. But at the school the effect had been of warmth. Here, all was bleak stone.

Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought. The arched ceiling stood two stories above her with great crossbeams she felt sure had been shipped here to Arrakis across space at monstrous cost. No planet of this system grew trees to make such beams —unless the beams were imitation wood.

She thought not.

This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag—a cheap and brassy place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Broken Land. Leto had been wise to choose this place for his seat of government. The name, Arrakeen, had a good sound, filled with tradition. And this was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend.

Again there came the clatter of boxes being unloaded in the entry. Jessica sighed.

Against a carton to her right stood the painting of the Duke’s father.

Wrapping twine hung from it like a frayed decoration. A piece of the twine was still clutched in Jessica’s left hand. Beside the painting lay a black bull’s head mounted on a polished board. The head was a dark island in a sea of wadded paper. Its plaque lay flat on the floor, and the bull’s shiny muzzle pointed at the ceiling as though the beast were ready to bellow a challenge into this echoing room.

Jessica wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things first—the head and the painting. She knew there was something symbolic in the action. Not since the day when the Duke’s buyers had taken her from the school had she felt this frightened and unsure of herself.

The head and the picture.

They heightened her feelings of confusion. She shuddered, glanced at the slit windows high overhead. It was still early afternoon here, and in these latitudes the sky looked black and cold—so much darker than the warm blue of Caladan.

A pang of homesickness throbbed through her.

So far away, Caladan.

“Here we are!” The voice was Duke Leto’s.

She whirled, saw him striding from the arched passage to the dining hall. His black working uniform with red armorial hawk crest at the breast looked dusty and rumpled.

“I thought you might have lost yourself in this hideous place,”he said.

“It is a cold house,”she said. She looked at his tallness, at the dark skin that made her think of olive groves and golden sun on blue waters. There was woodsmoke in the gray of his eyes, but the face was predatory: thin, full of sharp angles and planes.

A sudden fear of him tightened her breast. He had become such a savage, driving person since the decision to bow to the Emperor’s command.

“The whole city feels cold,”she said.

“It’s a dirty, dusty little garrison town,”he agreed. “But we’ll change that.” He looked around the hall. “These are public rooms for state occasions. I’ve just glanced at some of the family apartments in the south wing. They’re much nicer.”He stepped closer, touched her arm, admiring her stateliness.

And again, he wondered at her unknown ancestry—a renegade House, perhaps? Some black-barred royalty? She looked more regal than the Emperor’s own blood.

Under the pressure of his stare, she turned half away, exposing her profile.

And he realized there was no single and precise thing that brought her beauty to focus. The face was oval under a cap of hair the color of polished bronze. Her eyes were set wide, as green and clear as the morning skies of Caladan. The nose was small, the mouth wide and generous. Her figure was good but scant: tall and with its curves gone to slimness.

He remembered that the lay sisters at the school had called her skinny, so his buyers had told him. But that description oversimplified. She had brought a regal beauty back into the Atreides line. He was glad that Paul favored her.

“Where’s Paul?”he asked.

“Someplace around the house taking his lessons with Yueh.”

“Probably in the south wing,”he said. “I thought I heard Yueh’s voice, but I couldn’t take time to look.”He glanced down at her, hesitating. “I came here only to hang the key of Caladan Castle in the dining hall.” She caught her breath, stopped the impulse to reach out to him. Hanging the key—there was finality in that action. But this was not the time or place for comforting. “I saw our banner over the house as we came in,”she said.

He glanced at the painting of his father. “Where were you going to hang that?”

“Somewhere in here.”

“No.”The word rang flat and final, telling her she could use trickery to persuade, but open argument was useless. Still, she had to try, even if the gesture served only to remind herself that she would not trick him.

“My Lord,”she said, “if you’d only….”

“The answer remains no. I indulge you shamefully in most things, not in this.

I’ve just come from the dining hall where there are—”

“My Lord! Please.”

“The choice is between your digestion and my ancestral dignity, my dear,” he said. “They will hang in the dining hall.” She sighed. “Yes, my Lord.”

“You may resume your custom of dining in your rooms whenever possible. I shall expect you at your proper position only on formal occasions.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

“And don’t go all cold and formal on me! Be thankful that I never married you, my dear. Then it’d be your duty to join me at table for every meal.”

She held her face immobile, nodded.

“Hawat already has our own poison snooper over the dining table,”he said.

“There’s a portable in your room.”

“You anticipated this … disagreement,”she said.

“My dear, I think also of your comfort. I’ve engaged servants. They’re locals, but Hawat has cleared them—they’re Fremen all. They’ll do until our own people can be released from their other duties.”

“Can anyone from this place be truly safe?”

“Anyone who hates Harkonnens. You may even want to keep the head housekeeper: the Shadout Mapes.”

“Shadout,”Jessica said. “A Fremen title?”

“I’m told it means ‘well-dipper,’ a meaning with rather important overtones here. She may not strike you as a servant type, although Hawat speaks highly of her on the basis of Duncan’s report. They’re convinced she wants to serve— specifically that she wants to serve you.”

“Me?”

“The Fremen have learned that you’re Bene Gesserit,”he said. “There are legends here about the Bene Gesserit.” The Missionaria Protectiva, Jessica thought. No place escapes them.

“Does this mean Duncan was successful?”she asked. “Will the Fremen be our allies?”

“There’s nothing definite,”he said. “They wish to observe us for a while, Duncan believes. They did, however, promise to stop raiding our outlying villages during a truce period. That’s a more important gain than it might seem.

Hawat tells me the Fremen were a deep thorn in the Harkonnen side, that the extent of their ravages was a carefully guarded secret. It wouldn’t have helped for the Emperor to learn the ineffectiveness of the Harkonnen military.”

“A Fremen housekeeper,”Jessica mused, returning to the subject of the Shadout Mapes. “She’ll have the all-blue eyes.”

“Don’t let the appearance of these people deceive you,”he said. “There’s a deep strength and healthy vitality in them. I think they’ll be everything we need.”

“It’s a dangerous gamble,”she said.

“Let’s not go into that again,”he said.

She forced a smile. “We are committed, no doubt of that.”She went through the quick regimen of calmness—the two deep breaths, the ritual thought, then: “When I assign rooms, is there anything special I should reserve for you?”

“You must teach me someday how you do that,”he said, “the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing.”

“It’s a female thing,”she said.

He smiled. “Well, assignment of rooms: make certain I have large office space next to my sleeping quarters. There’ll be more paper work here than on Caladan. A guard room, of course. That should cover it. Don’t worry about security of the house. Hawat’s men have been over it in depth.”

“I’m sure they have.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “And you might see that all our timepieces are adjusted for Arrakeen local. I’ve assigned a tech to take care of it. He’ll be along presently.”He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. “I must return to the landing field now. The second shuttle’s due any minute with my staff reserves.”

“Couldn’t Hawat meet them, my Lord? You look so tired.”

“The good Thufir is even busier than I am. You know this planet’s infested with Harkonnen intrigues. Besides, I must try persuading some of the trained spice hunters against leaving. They have the option, you know, with the change of fief—and this planetologist the Emperor and the Landsraad installed as Judge of the Change cannot be bought. He’s allowing the opt. About eight hundred trained hands expect to go out on the spice shuttle and there’s a Guild cargo ship standing by.”

“My Lord….”She broke off, hesitating.

“Yes?” He will not be persuaded against trying to make this planet secure for us, she thought. And I cannot use my tricks on him.

“At what time will you be expecting dinner?”she asked.

That’s not what she was going to say, he thought Ah-h-h-h, my Jessica, would that we were somewhere else, anywhere away from this terrible place— alone, the two of us, without a care.

“I’ll eat in the officers’ mess at the field,”he said. “Don’t expect me until very late. And … ah, I’ll be sending a guardcar for Paul. I want him to attend our strategy conference.” He cleared his throat as though to say something else, then, without warning, turned and strode out, headed for the entry where she could hear more boxes being deposited. His voice sounded once from there, commanding and disdainful, the way he always spoke to servants when he was in a hurry: “The Lady Jessica’s in the Great Hall. Join her there immediately.” The outer door slammed.

Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto’s father. It had been done by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old Duke’s middle years. He was portrayed in matador costume with a magenta cape flung over his left arm. The face looked young, hardly older than Leto’s now, and with the same hawk features, the same gray stare. She clenched her fists at her sides, glared at the painting.

“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!”she whispered.

“What are your orders, Noble Born?” It was a woman’s voice, thin and stringy.

Jessica whirled, stared down at a knobby, gray-haired woman in a shapeless sack dress of bondsman brown. The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field that morning. Every native she had seen on this planet, Jessica thought, looked prune dry and undernourished. Yet, Leto had said they were strong and vital. And there were the eyes, of course—that wash of deepest, darkest blue without any white—secretive, mysterious. Jessica forced herself not to stare.

The woman gave a stiff-necked nod, said: “I am called the Shadout Mapes, Noble Born. What are your orders?”

“You may refer to me as ‘my Lady,’ ”Jessica said. “I’m not noble born. I’m the bound concubine of the Duke Leto.” Again that strange nod, and the woman peered upward at Jessica with a sly questioning. “There’s a wife, then?”

“There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke’s only … companion, the mother of his heir-designate.” Even as she spoke, Jessica laughed inwardly at the pride behind her words.

What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. ”Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.

A weird cry sounded from the road outside the house. It was repeated: “Soosoo-Sook! Soo-soo-Sook!”Then: “Ikhut-eigh! Ikhut-eigh!”And again: “Soosoo-Sook!”

“What is that?”Jessica asked. “I heard it several times as we drove through the streets this morning.”

“Only a water-seller, my Lady. But you’ve no need to interest yourself in such as they. The cistern here holds fifty thousand liters and it’s always kept full.”She glanced down at her dress. “Why, you know, my Lady, I don’t even have to wear my stillsuit here?”She cackled. “And me not even dead!” Jessica hesitated, wanting to question this Fremen woman, needing data to guide her. But bringing order of the confusion in the castle was more imperative.

Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark of wealth here.

“My husband told me of your title, Shadout,”Jessica said. “I recognized the word. It’s a very ancient word.”

“You know the ancient tongues then?”Mapes asked, and she waited with an odd intensity.

“Tongues are the Bene Gesserit’s first learning,”Jessica said. “I know the Bhotani Jib and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages.” Mapes nodded. “Just as the legend says.” And Jessica wondered: Why do Iplayout this sham? But the Bene Gesserit ways were devious and compelling.

“I know the Dark Things and the ways of the Great Mother,”Jessica said.

She read the more obvious signs in Mapes’ actions and appearance, the petit betrayals. “Miseces prejia,”she said in the Chakobsa tongue. “Andral t’re pera! Trada cik buscakri miseces perakri—” Mapes took a backward step, appeared poised to flee.

“I know many things,”Jessica said. “I know that you have borne children, that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have done violence and will yet do more violence. I know many things.” In a low voice, Mapes said: “I meant no offense, my Lady.”

“You speak of the legend and seek answers,”Jessica said. “Beware the answers you may find. I know you came prepared for violence with a weapon in your bodice.”

“My Lady, I….”

“There’s a remote possibility you could draw my life’s blood,”Jessica said, “but in so doing you’d bring down more ruin than your wildest fears could imagine. There are worse things than dying, you know—even for an entire people.”

“My Lady!”Mapes pleaded. She appeared about to fall to her knees. “The weapon was sent as a gift to you should you prove to be the One.”

“And as the means of my death should I prove otherwise,”Jessica said. She waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bene Gesserit-trained so terrifying in combat.

Now we see which way the decision tips, she thought.

Slowly, Mapes reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath.

A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took sheath in one hand and handle in the other, withdrew a milk-white blade, held it up. The blade seemed to shine and glitter with a light of its own. It was double-edged like a kindjal and the blade was perhaps twenty centimeters long.

“Do you know this, my Lady?”Mapes asked.

It could only be one thing, Jessica knew, the fabled crysknife of Arrakis, the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor and wild gossip.

“It’s a crysknife,”she said.

“Say it not lightly,”Mapes said. “Do you know its meaning?” And Jessica thought: There was an edge to that question. Here’s the reason this Fremen has taken service with me, to ask that one question. My answer could precipitate violence or … what? She seeks an answer from me: the meaning of a knife. She’s called the Shadout in the Chakobsa tongue. Knife, that’s “Death Maker”in Chakobsa. She’s getting restive. I must answer now.

Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

Jessica said: “It’s a maker—”

“Eighe-e-e-e-e-e!”Mapes wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation.

She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection shooting around the room.

Jessica waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of death and then add the ancient word, but every sense warned her now, all the deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle twitch.

The key word was … maker.

Maker? Maker.

Still, Mapes held the knife as though ready to use it.

Jessica said: “Did you think that I, knowing the mysteries of the Great Mother, would not know the Maker?” Mapes lowered the knife. “My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock.” Jessica thought about the prophecy—the Shari-a and all the panoplia propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long centuries ago—long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene Gesserit’s need.

Well, that day had come.

Mapes returned knife to sheath, said: “This is an unfixed blade, my Lady.

Keep it near you. More than a week away from flesh and it begins to disintegrate. It’s yours, a tooth of shai-hulud, for as long as you live.” Jessica reached out her right hand, risked a gamble: “Mapes, you’ve sheathed that blade unblooded.” With a gasp, Mapes dropped the sheathed knife into Jessica’s hand, tore open the brown bodice, wailing: “Take the water of my life!” Jessica withdrew the blade from its sheath. How it glittered! She directed the point toward Mapes, saw a fear greater than death-panic come over the woman.

Poison in the point? Jessica wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate scratch with the blade’s edge above Mapes’ left breast. There was a thick welling of blood that stopped almost immediately. Ultrafast coagulation, Jessica thought. A moisture-conserving mutation? She sheathed the blade, said: “Button your dress, Mapes.” Mapes obeyed, trembling. The eyes without whites stared at Jessica. “You are ours,”she muttered. “You are the One.” There came another sound of unloading in the entry. Swiftly, Mapes grabbed the sheathed knife, concealed it in Jessica’s bodice. “Who sees that knife must be cleansed or slain!”she snarled. “You know that, my Lady!” I know it now, Jessica thought.

The cargo handlers left without intruding on the Great Hall.

Mapes composed herself, said: “The uncleansed who have seen a crysknife may not leave Arrakis alive. Never forget that, my Lady. You’ve been entrusted with a crysknife.”She took a deep breath. “Now the thing must take its course. It cannot be hurried.”She glanced at the stacked boxes and piled goods around them. “And there’s work aplenty to while the time for us here.” Jessica hesitated. “The thing must take its course.”That was a specific catchphrase from the Missionaria Protectiva’s stock of incantations—The coming of the Reverend Mother to free you.

But I’m not a Reverend Mother, Jessica thought. And then: Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place! In matter-of-fact tones, Mapes said: “What’ll you be wanting me to do first, my Lady?” Instinct warned Jessica to match that casual tone. She said: “The painting of the Old Duke over there, it must be hung on one side of the dining hall. The bull’s head must go on the wall opposite the painting.” Mapes crossed to the bull’s head. “What a great beast it must have been to carry such a head,”she said. She stooped. “I’ll have to be cleaning this first, won’t I, my Lady?”

“No.”

“But there’s dirt caked on its horns.”

“That’s not dirt, Mapes. That’s the blood of our Duke’s father. Those horns were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after this beast killed the Old Duke.” Mapes stood up. “Ah, now!”she said.

“It’s just blood,”Jessica said. “Old blood at that. Get some help hanging these now. The beastly things are heavy.”

“Did you think the blood bothered me?”Mapes asked. “I’m of the desert and I’ve seen blood aplenty.”

“I … see that you have,”Jessica said.

“And some of it my own,”Mapes said. “More’n you drew with your puny scratch.”

“You’d rather I’d cut deeper?”

“Ah, no! The body’s water is scant enough ‘thout gushing a wasteful lot of it into the air. You did the thing right.” And Jessica, noting the words and manner, caught the deeper implications in the phrase, “the body’s water.”Again she felt a sense of oppression at the importance of water on Arrakis.

“On which side of the dining hall shall I hang which one of these pretties, my Lady?”Mapes asked.

Ever the practical one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. She said: “Use your own judgment, Mapes. It makes no real difference.”

“As you say, my Lady.”Mapes stooped, began clearing wrappings and twine from the head. “Killed an old duke, did you?”she crooned.

“Shall I summon a handler to help you?”Jessica asked.

“I’ll manage, my Lady.” Yes, she’ll manage, Jessica thought. There’s that about this Fremen creature: the drive to manage.

Jessica felt the cold sheath of the crysknife beneath her bodice, thought of the long chain of Bene Gesserit scheming that had forged another link here.

Because of that scheming, she had survived a deadly crisis. “It cannot be hurried,”Mapes had said. Yet there was a tempo of headlong rushing to this place that filled Jessica with foreboding. And not all the preparations of the Missionaria Protectiva nor Hawat’s suspicious inspection of this castellated pile of rocks could dispel the feeling.

“When you’ve finished hanging those, start unpacking the boxes,”Jessica said. “One of the cargo men at the entry has all the keys and knows where things should go. Get the keys and the list from him. If there are any questions I’ll be in the south wing.”

“As you will, my Lady,”Mapes said.

Jessica turned away, thinking: Hawat may have passed this residency as safe, but there’s something wrong about the place. I can feel it.

An urgent need to see her son gripped Jessica. She began walking toward the arched doorway that led into the passage to the dining hall and the family wings.

Faster and faster she walked until she was almost running.

Behind her, Mapes paused in clearing the wrappings from the bull’s head, looked at the retreating back. “She’s the One all right,”she muttered. “Poor thing.”