Dune (35 page)

“The Emperor does not wish it known he fights against a Great House,” Hawat
said.

“But you know they are Sardaukar.”

“Who am I?” Hawat asked bitterly.

“You are Thufir Hawat,” the man said matter-?of-?factly. “Well, we would have
learned it in time. We’ve sent three of them captive to be questioned by Liet’s
men.”

Hawat’s aide spoke slowly, disbelief in every word: “You . . . captured
Sardaukar?”

“Only three of them,” the Fremen said. “They fought well.”

If only we’d had the time to link up with these Fremen, Hawat thought. It
was a sour lament in his mind. If only we could’ve trained them and armed them.
Great Mother, what a fighting force we’d have had!

“Perhaps you delay because of worry over the Lisan al-?Gaib,” the Fremen
said. “If he is truly the Lisan al-?Gaib, harm cannot touch him. Do not spend
thoughts on a matter which has not been proved.”

“I serve the . . . Lisan al-?Gaib,” Hawat said. “His welfare is my concern.
I’ve pledged myself to this.”

“You are pledged to his water?”

Hawat glanced at his aide, who was still staring at the Fremen, returned his
attention to the squatting figure. “To his water, yes.”

“You wish to return to Arrakeen, to the place of his water?”

“To . . . yes, to the place of his water.”
“Why did you not say at first it was a water matter?” The Fremen stood up,
seated his nose plugs firmly.

Hawat motioned with his head for his aide to return to the others. With a
tired shrug, the man obeyed. Hawat heard a low-?voiced conversation arise among
the men.

The Fremen said: “There is always a way to water.”

Behind Hawat, a man cursed. Hawat’s aide called: “Thufir! Arkie just died.”

The Fremen put a fist to his ear. “The bond of water! It’s a sign!” He
stared at Hawat. “We have a place nearby for accepting the water. Shall I call
my men?”

The aide returned to Hawat’s side, said: “Thufir, a couple of the men left
wives in Arrakeen. They’re . . . well, you know how it is at a time like this.”

The Fremen still held his fist to his ear. “Is it the bond of water, Thufir
Hawat?” he demanded.

Hawat’s mind was racing. He sensed now the direction of the Fremen’s words,
but feared the reaction of the tired men under the rock overhang when they
understood it.

“The bond of water,” Hawat said.

“Let our tribes be joined,” the Fremen said, and he lowered his fist.

As though that were the signal, four men slid and dropped down from the
rocks above them. They darted back under the overhang, rolled the dead man in a
loose robe, lifted him and began running with him along the cliff wall to the
right. Spurts of dust lifted around their running feet.

It was over before Hawat’s tired men could gather their wits. The group with
the body hanging like a sack in its enfolding robe was gone around a turn in the
cliff.

One of Hawat’s men shouted: “Where they going with Arkie? He was–”

“They’re taking him to . . . bury him,” Hawat said.

“Fremen don’t bury their dead!” the man barked. “Don’t you try any tricks on
us, Thufir. We know what they do. Arkie was one of–”

“Paradise were sure for a man who died in the service of Lisan al-?Gaib,” the
Fremen said. “If it is the Lisan al-?Gaib you serve, as you have said it, why
raise mourning cries? The memory of one who died in this fashion will live as
long as the memory of man endures.”

But Hawat’s men advanced, angry looks on their faces. One had captured a
lasgun. He started to draw it.

“Stop right where you are!” Hawat barked. He fought down the sick fatigue
that gripped his muscles. “These people respect our dead. Customs differ, but
the meaning’s the same.”

“They’re going to render Arkie down for his water,” the man with the lasgun
snarled.

“Is it that your men wish to attend the ceremony?” the Fremen asked.

He doesn’t even see the problem, Hawat thought. The naivete of the Fremen
was frightening.

“They’re concerned for a respected comrade,” Hawat said.

“We will treat your comrade with the same reverence we treat our own,” the
Fremen said. “This is the bond of water. We know the rites. A man’s flesh is his
own; the water belongs to the tribe.”

Hawat spoke quickly as the man with the lasgun advanced another step. “Will
you now help our wounded?”

“One does not question the bond,” the Fremen said. “We will do for you what
a tribe does for its own. First, we must get all of you suited and see to the
necessities.”

The man with the lasgun hesitated.

Hawat’s aide said: “Are we buying help with Arkie’s . . . water?”

“Not buying,” Hawat said. “We’ve joined these people.”

“Customs differ,” one of his men muttered.
Hawat began to relax.

“And they’ll help us get to Arrakeen?”

“We will kill Harkonnens,” the Fremen said. He grinned. “And Sardaukar.” He
stepped backward, cupped his hands beside his ears and tipped his head back,
listening. Presently, he lowered his hands, said: “An aircraft comes. Conceal
yourselves beneath the rock and remain’ motionless.”

At a gesture from Hawat, his men obeyed.

The Fremen took Hawat’s arm, pressed him back with the others. “We will
fight in the time of fighting,” the man said. He reached beneath his robes,
brought out a small cage, lifted a creature from it.

Hawat recognized a tiny bat. The bat turned its head and Hawat saw its blue-
within-?blue eyes.

The Fremen stroked the bat, soothing it, crooning to it. He bent over the
animal’s head, allowed a drop of saliva to fall from his tongue into the bat’s
upturned mouth. The bat stretched its wings, but remained on the Fremen’s opened
hand. The man took a tiny tube, held it beside the bat’s head and chattered into
the tube; then, lifting the creature high, he threw it upward.

The bat swooped away beside the cliff and was lost to sight.

The Fremen folded the cage, thrust it beneath his robe. Again, he bent his
head, listening. “They quarter the high country,” he said. “One wonders who they
seek up there.”

“It’s known that we retreated in this direction,” Hawat said.

“One should never presume one is the sole object of a hunt,” the Fremen
said. “Watch the other side of the basin. You will see a thing.”

Time passed.

Some of Hawat’s men stirred, whispering.

“Remain silent as frightened animals,” the Fremen hissed.

Hawat discerned movement near the opposite cliff–flitting blurs of tan on
tan.

“My little friend carried his message,” the Fremen said. “He is a good
messenger–day or night. I’ll be unhappy to lose that one.”

The movement across the sink faded away. On the entire four to five
kilometer expanse of sand nothing remained but the growing pressure of the day’s
heat–blurred columns of rising air.

“Be most silent now,” the Fremen whispered.

A file of plodding figures emerged from a break in the opposite cliff,
headed directly across the sink. To Hawat, they appeared to be Fremen, but a
curiously inept band. He counted six men making heavy going of it over the
dunes.

A “thwok-?thwok” of ornithopter wings sounded high to the right behind
Hawat’s group. The craft came over the cliff wall above them–an Atreides
‘thopter with Harkonnen battle colors splashed on it. The ‘thopter swooped
toward the men crossing the sink.

The group there stopped on a dune crest, waved.

The ‘thopter circled once over them in a tight curve, came back for a dust-
shrouded landing in front of the Fremen. Five men swarmed from the ‘thopter and
Hawat saw the dust-?repellent shimmering of shields and, in their motions, the
hard competence of Sardaukar.

“Aiihh! They use their stupid shields,” the Fremen beside Hawat hissed. He
glanced toward the open south wall of the sink.

“They are Sardaukar,” Hawat whispered.

“Good.”

The Sardaukar approached the waiting group of Fremen in an enclosing half-
circle. Sun glinted on blades held ready. The Fremen stood in a compact group,
apparently indifferent.
Abruptly, the sand around the two groups sprouted Fremen. They were at the
ornithopter, then in it. Where the two groups had met at the dune crest, a dust
cloud partly obscured violent motion.

Presently, dust settled. Only Fremen remained standing.

“They left only three men in their ‘thopter,” the Fremen beside Hawat said.
“That was fortunate. I don’t believe we had to damage the craft in taking it.”

Behind Hawat, one of his men whispered: “Those were Sardaukar!”

“Did you notice how well they fought?” the Fremen asked.

Hawat took a deep breath. He smelled the burned dust around him, felt the
heat, the dryness. In a voice to match that dryness, he said: “Yes, they fought
well, indeed.”

The captured ‘thopter took off with a lurching flap of wings, angled upward
to the south in a steep, wing-?tucked climb.

So these Fremen can handle ‘thopters, too, Hawat thought.

On the distant dune, a Fremen waved a square of green cloth: once . . .
twice.

“More come!” the Fremen beside Hawat barked. “Be ready. I’d hoped to have us
away without more inconvenience.”

Inconvenience! Hawat thought.

He saw two more ‘thopters swooping from high in the west onto an area of
sand suddenly devoid of visible Fremen. Only eight splotches of blue–the bodies
of the Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniforms–remained at the scene of violence.

Another ‘thopter glided in over the cliff wall above Hawat. He drew in a
sharp breath as he saw it–a big troop carrier. It flew with the slow, spread-
wing heaviness of a full load–like a giant bird coming to its nest.

In the distance, the purple finger of a lasgun beam flicked from one of the
diving ‘thopters. It laced across the sand, raising a sharp trail of dust.

“The cowards!” the Fremen beside Hawat rasped.

The troop carrier settled toward the patch of blue-?clad bodies. Its wings
crept out to full reach, began the cupping action of a quick stop.

Hawat’s attention was caught by a flash of sun on metal to the south, a
‘thopter plummeting there in a power dive, wings folded flat against its sides,
its jets a golden flare against the dark silvered gray of the sky. It plunged
like an arrow toward the troop carrier which was unshielded because of the
lasgun activity around it. Straight into the carrier the diving ‘thopter
plunged.

A flaming roar shook the basin. Rocks tumbled from the cliff walls all
around. A geyser of red-?orange shot skyward from the sand where the carrier and
its companion ‘thopters had been–everything there caught in the flame.

It was the Fremen who took off in that captured ‘thopter, Hawat thought. He
deliberately sacrificed himself to get that carrier. Great Mother! What are
these Fremen?

“A reasonable exchange,” said the Fremen beside Hawat. “There must’ve been
three hundred men in that carrier. Now, we must see to their water and make
plans to get another aircraft.” He started to step out of their rock-?shadowed
concealment.

A rain of blue uniforms came over the cliff wall in front of him, falling in
low-?suspensor slowness. In the flashing instant, Hawat had time to see that they
were Sardaukar, hard faces set in battle frenzy, that they were unshielded and
each carried a knife in one hand, a stunner in the other.

A thrown knife caught Hawat’s Fremen companion in the throat, hurting him
backward, twisting face down. Hawat had only time to draw his own knife before
blackness of a stunner projectile felled him.

= = = = = =
Muad’Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of
this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you
are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so,
Muad’Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells
us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word
over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us “The
vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow
door.” And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course,
warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
-from “Arrakis Awakening” by the Princess Irulan

As the ornithopters glided out of the night above them, Paul grabbed his
mother’s arm, snapped: “Don’t move!”

Then he saw the lead craft in the moonlight, the way its wings cupped to
brake for landing, the reckless dash of the hands at the controls.

“It’s Idaho,” he breathed.

The craft and its companions settled into the basin like a covey of birds
coming to nest. Idaho was out of his ‘thopter and running toward them before the
dust settled. Two figures in Fremen robes followed him. Paul recognized one: the
tall, sandy-?bearded Kynes.

“This way!” Kynes called and he veered left.

Behind Kynes, other Fremen were throwing fabric covers over their
ornithopters. The craft became a row of shallow dunes.

Idaho skidded to a stop in front of Paul, saluted. “M’Lord, the Fremen have
a temporary hiding place nearby where we–”

“What about that back there?”

Paul pointed to the violence above the distant cliff–the jetflares, the
purple beams of lasguns lacing the desert.

A rare smile touched Idaho’s round, placid face. “M’Lord . . . Sire, I’ve
left them a little sur–”

Glaring white light filled the desert–bright as a sun, etching their
shadows onto the rock floor of the ledge. In one sweeping motion, Idaho had
Paul’s arm in one hand, Jessica’s shoulder in the other, hurling them down off
the ledge into the basin. They sprawled together in the sand as the roar of an
explosion thundered over them. Its shock wave tumbled chips off the rock ledge
they had vacated.

Idaho sat up, brushed sand from himself.

“Not the family atomics!” Jessica said. “I thought–”