Dune (75 page)

“New victories,” Jessica said. “Rabban has sent cautious overtures about a truce. His messengers have been returned without their water. Rabban has even lightened the burdens of the people in some of the sink villages. But he is too late. The people know he does it out of fear of us.”

“Thus it goes as Muad'Dib said,” Chani said. She stared at Jessica, trying to keep her fears to herself.
I have spoken his name, but she has not responded. One cannot see emotion in that glazed stone she calls a face . . . but she is too frozen. Why is she so still? What has happened to my Usul?

“I wish we were in the south,” Jessica said. “The oases were so beautiful when we left. Do you not long for the day when the whole land may blossom thus?”

“The land is beautiful, true,” Chani said. “But there is much grief in it.”

“Grief is the price of victory,” Jessica said.

Is she preparing me for grief?
Chani asked herself. She said: “There are so many women without men. There was jealousy when it was learned that I'd been summoned north.”

“I summoned you,” Jessica said.

Chani felt her heart hammering. She wanted to clap her hands to her ears, fearful of what they might hear. Still, she kept her voice even: “The message was signed Muad'Dib.”

“I signed it thus in the presence of his lieutenants,” Jessica said. “It was a subterfuge of necessity.” And Jessica thought:
This is a brave woman, my Paul's. She holds to the niceties even when fear is almost overwhelming her. Yes. She may be the one we need now.

Only the slightest tone of resignation crept into Chani's voice as she said: “Now you may say the thing that must be said.”

“You were needed here to help me revive Paul,” Jessica said. And she thought:
There! I said it in the precisely correct way.
Revive.
Thus she knows Paul is alive and knows there is peril, all in the same word.

Chani took only a moment to calm herself, then: “What is it I may do?” She wanted to leap at Jessica, shake her and scream:
“Take me to him!”
But she waited silently for the answer.

“I suspect,” Jessica said, “that the Harkonnens have managed to send an agent among us to poison Paul. It's the only explanation that seems to fit. A most unusual poison. I've examined his blood in the most subtle ways without detecting it.”

Chani thrust herself forward onto her knees. “Poison? Is he in pain? Could I . . . .”

“He is unconscious,” Jessica said. “The processes of his life are so low that they can be detected only with the most refined techniques. I shudder to think what could have happened had I not been the one to discover him. He appears dead to the untrained eye.”

“You have reasons other than courtesy for summoning me,” Chani said. “I know you, Reverend Mother. What is it you think I may do that you cannot do?”

She is brave, lovely and, ah-h-h, so perceptive,
Jessica thought.
She'd have made a fine Bene Gesserit.

“Chani,” Jessica said, “you may find this difficult to believe, but I do not know precisely why I sent for you. It was an instinct . . . a basic intuition. The thought came unbidden: ‘Send for Chani.' ”

For the first time, Chani saw the sadness in Jessica's expression, the unveiled pain modifying the inward stare.

“I've done all I know to do,” Jessica said. “That
all
. . . it is so far beyond what is usually supposed as
all
that you would find difficulty imagining it. Yet . . . I failed.”

“The old companion, Halleck,” Chani asked, “is it possible he's a traitor?”

“Not Gurney,” Jessica said.

The two words carried an entire conversation, and Chani saw the searching, the tests . . . the memories of old failures that went into this flat denial.

Chani rocked back onto her feet, stood up, smoothed her desert-stained robe. “Take me to him,” she said.

Jessica arose, turned through hangings on the left wall.

Chani followed, found herself in what had been a storeroom, its rock walls concealed now beneath heavy draperies. Paul lay on a field pad against the far wall. A single glowglobe above him illuminated his face. A black robe covered him to the chest, leaving his arms outside it stretched along his sides. He appeared to be unclothed under the robe. The skin exposed looked waxen, rigid. There was no visible movement to him.

Chani suppressed the desire to dash forward, throw herself across him. She found her thoughts, instead, going to her son—Leto. And she realized in this instant that Jessica once had faced such a moment—her man threatened by death, forced in her own mind to consider what might be done to save a young son. The realization formed a sudden bond with the older woman so that Chani reached out and clasped Jessica's hand. The answering grip was painful in its intensity.

“He lives,” Jessica said. “I assure you he lives. But the thread of his life is so thin it could easily escape detection. There are some among the leaders already muttering that the mother speaks and not the Reverend Mother, that my son is truly dead and I do not want to give up his water to the tribe.”

“How long has he been this way?” Chani asked. She disengaged her hand from Jessica's, moved farther into the room.

“Three weeks,” Jessica said. “I spent almost a week trying to revive him. There were meetings, arguments . . . investigations. Then I sent for you. The Fedaykin obey my orders, else I might not have been able to delay the . . . .” She wet her lips with her tongue, watching Chani cross to Paul.

Chani stood over him now, looking down on the soft beard of youth that framed his face, tracing with her eyes the high browline, the strong nose, the shuttered eyes—the features so peaceful in this rigid repose.

“How does he take nourishment?” Chani asked.

“The demands of his flesh are so slight he does not yet need food,” Jessica said.

“How many know of what has happened?” Chani asked.

“Only his closest advisers, a few of the leaders, the Fedaykin and, of course, whoever administered the poison.”

“There is no clue to the poisoner?”

“And it's not for want of investigating,” Jessica said.

“What do the Fedaykin say?” Chani asked.

“They believe Paul is in a sacred trance, gathering his holy powers before the final battles. This is a thought I've cultivated.”

Chani lowered herself to her knees beside the pad, bent close to Paul's face. She sensed an immediate difference in the air about his face . . . but it was only the spice, the ubiquitous spice whose odor permeated everything in Fremen life. Still . . . .

“You were not born to the spice as we were,” Chani said. “Have you investigated the possibility that his body has rebelled against too much spice in his diet?”

“Allergy reactions are all negative,” Jessica said.

She closed her eyes, as much to blot out this scene as because of sudden realization of fatigue.
How long have I been without sleep?
she asked herself.
Too long.

“When you change the Water of Life,” Chani said, “you do it within yourself by the inward awareness. Have you used this awareness to test his blood?”

“Normal Fremen blood,” Jessica said. “Completely adapted to the diet and the life here.”

Chani sat back on her heels, submerging her fears in thought as she studied Paul's face. This was a trick she had learned from watching the Reverend Mothers. Time could be made to serve the mind. One concentrated the entire attention.

Presently, Chani said: “Is there a maker here?”

“There are several,” Jessica said with a touch of weariness. “We are never without them these days. Each victory requires its blessing. Each ceremony before a raid—”

“But Paul Muad'Dib has held himself aloof from these ceremonies,” Chani said.

Jessica nodded to herself, remembering her son's ambivalent feelings toward the spice drug and the prescient awareness it precipitated.

“How did you know this?” Jessica asked.

“It is spoken.”

“Too much is spoken,” Jessica said bitterly.

“Get me the raw Water of the maker,” Chani said.

Jessica stiffened at the tone of command in Chani's voice, then observed the intense concentration in the younger woman and said: “At once.” She went out through the hangings to send a waterman.

Chani sat staring at Paul.
If he has tried to do this,
she thought.
And it's the sort of thing he might try . . . .

Jessica knelt beside Chani, holding out a plain camp ewer. The charged odor of the poison was sharp in Chani's nostrils. She dipped a finger in the fluid, held the finger close to Paul's nose.

The skin along the bridge of his nose wrinkled slightly. Slowly, the nostrils flared.

Jessica gasped.

Chani touched the dampened finger to Paul's upper lip.

He drew in a long, sobbing breath.

“What is this?” Jessica demanded.

“Be still,” Chani said. “You must convert a small amount of the sacred water. Quickly!”

Without questioning, because she recognized the tone of awareness in Chani's voice, Jessica lifted the ewer to her mouth, drew in a small sip.

Paul's eyes flew open. He stared upward at Chani.

“It is not necessary for her to change the Water,” he said. His voice was weak, but steady.

Jessica, a sip of the fluid on her tongue, found her body rallying, converting the poison almost automatically. In the light elevation the ceremony always imparted, she sensed the life-glow from Paul—a radiation there registering on her senses.

In that instant, she knew.

“You drank the sacred water!” she blurted.

“One drop of it,” Paul said. “So small . . . one drop.”

“How could you do such a foolish thing?” she demanded.

“He is your son,” Chani said.

Jessica glared at her.

A rare smile, warm and full of understanding, touched Paul's lips. “Hear my beloved,” he said. “Listen to her, Mother. She knows.”

“A thing that others can do, he must do,” Chani said.

“When I had the drop in my mouth, when I felt it and smelled it, when I knew what it was doing to me, then I knew I could do the thing that you have done,” he said. “Your Bene Gesserit proctors speak of the Kwisatz Haderach, but they cannot begin to guess the many places I have been. In the few minutes I . . . .” He broke off, looking at Chani with a puzzled frown. “Chani? How did you get here? You're supposed to be . . . . Why are you here?”

He tried to push himself onto his elbows. Chani pressed him back gently.

“Please, my Usul,” she said.

“I feel so weak,” he said. His gaze darted around the room. “How long have I been here?”

“You've been three weeks in a coma so deep that the spark of life seemed to have fled,” Jessica said.

“But it was . . . . I took it just a moment ago and . . . .”

“A moment for you, three weeks of fear for me,” Jessica said.

“It was only one drop, but I converted it,” Paul said. “I changed the Water of Life.” And before Chani or Jessica could stop him, he dipped his hand into the ewer they had placed on the floor beside him, and he brought the dripping hand to his mouth, swallowed the palm-cupped liquid.

“Paul!” Jessica screamed.

He grabbed her hand, faced her with a death's head grin, and he sent his awareness surging over her.

The rapport was not as tender, not as sharing, not as encompassing as it had been with Alia and with the Old Reverend Mother in the cavern . . . but it was a rapport: a sense-sharing of the entire being. It shook her, weakened her, and she cowered in her mind, fearful of him.

Aloud, he said: “You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me.”

She shook her head, terrified by the very thought.

“Show it to me!” he commanded.

“No!”

But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she closed her eyes and focused inward-the-direction-that-is-dark.

Paul's consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness. She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen—a region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.

Presently, she opened her eyes, saw Paul staring up at her. He still held her hand, but the terrible rapport was gone. She quieted her trembling. Paul released her hand. It was as though some crutch had been removed. She staggered up and back, would have fallen had not Chani jumped to support her.

“Reverend Mother!” Chani said. “What is wrong?”

“Tired,” Jessica whispered. “So . . . tired.”

“Here,” Chani said. “Sit here.” She helped Jessica to a cushion against the wall.

The strong young arms felt so good to Jessica. She clung to Chani.

“He has, in truth, seen the Water of Life?” Chani asked. She disengaged herself from Jessica's grip.

“He has seen,” Jessica whispered. Her mind still rolled and surged from the contact. It was like stepping to solid land after weeks on a heaving sea. She sensed the old Reverend Mother within her ... and all the others awakened and questioning:
“What was that? What happened? Where was that place?”