Dune (47 page)

Paul swallowed, nodded.

Jessica listened to the sounds of the troop, hearing her own footsteps and
Paul’s, marveling at the way the Fremen moved. They were forty people crossing
the basin with only the sounds natural to the place–ghostly feluccas, their
robes flitting through the shadows. Their destination was Sietch Tabr–Stilgar’s
sietch.

She turned the word over in her mind; sietch. It was a Chakobsa word,
unchanged from the old hunting language out of countless centuries. Sietch: a
meeting place in time of danger. The profound implications of the word and the
language were just beginning to register with her after the tension of their
encounter.

“We move well,” Stilgar said. “With, Shai-?hulud’s favor, we’ll reach Cave of
the Ridges before dawn.”

Jessica nodded, conserving her strength, sensing the terrible fatigue she
held at bay by force of will . . . and, she admitted it: by the force of
elation. Her mind focused on the value of this troop, seeing what was revealed
here about the Fremen culture.

All of them, she thought, an entire culture trained to military order. What
a priceless thing is here for an outcast Duke!

= = = = = =

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”–
which is the self-?imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of
reaching out to grasp that thing.
-from “The Wisdom of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

They approached Cave of the Ridges at dawnbreak, moving through a split in
the basin wall so narrow they had to turn sideways to negotiate it. Jessica saw
Stilgar detach guards in the thin dawnlight, saw them for a moment as they began
their scrambling climb up the cliff.

Paul turned his head upward as he walked, seeing the tapestry of this planet
cut in cross section where the narrow cleft gaped toward gray-?blue sky.

Chani pulled at his robe to hurry him, said: “Quickly. It is already light.”

“The men who climbed above us, where are they going?” Paul whispered.

“The first daywatch,” she said. “Hurry now!”

A guard left outside, Paul thought. Wise. But it would’ve been wiser still
for us to approach this place in separate bands. Less chance of losing the whole
troop. He paused in the thought, realizing that this was guerrilla thinking, and
he remembered his father’s fear that the Atreides might become a guerrilla
house.

“Faster,” Chani whispered.

Paul sped his steps, hearing the swish of robes behind. And he thought of
the words of the sirat from Yueh’s tiny 0.C. Bible.

“Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.” He
rolled the quotation in his mind.

They rounded a corner where the passage widened. Stilgar stood at one side
motioning them into a low hole that opened at right angles.

“Quickly!” he hissed. “We’re like rabbits in a cage if a patrol catches us
here.”

Paul bent for the opening, followed Chani into a cave illuminated by thin
gray light from somewhere ahead.

“You can stand up,” she said.

He straightened, studied the place: a deep and wide area with domed ceiling
that curved away just out of a man’s handreach. The troop spread out through
shadows. Paul saw his mother come up on one side, saw her examine their
companions. And he noted how she failed to blend with the Fremen even though her
garb was identical. The way she moved–such a sense of power and grace.

“Find a place to rest and stay out of the way, child-?man,” Chani said.
“Here’s food.” She pressed two leaf-?wrapped morsels into his hand. They reeked
of spice.

Stilgar came up behind Jessica, called an order to a group on the left. “Get
the doorseal in place and see to moisture security.” He turned to another
Fremen: “Lemil, get glowglobes.” He took Jessica’s arm. “I wish to show you
something, weirding woman.” He led her around a curve of rock toward the light
source.
Jessica found herself looking out across the wide lip of another opening to
the cave, an opening high in a cliff wall–looking out across another basin
about ten or twelve kilometers wide. The basin was shielded by high rock walls.
Sparse clumps of plant growth were scattered around it.

As she looked at the dawn-?gray basin, the sun lifted over the far escarpment
illuminating a biscuit-?colored landscape of rocks and sand. And she noted how
the sun of Arrakis appeared to leap over the horizon.

It’s because we want to hold it back, she thought. Night is safer than day.
There came over her then a longing for a rainbow in this place that would never
see rain. I must suppress such longings, she thought. They’re a weakness. I no
longer can afford weaknesses.

Stilgar gripped her arm, pointed across the basin. “There! There you see
proper Druses.”

She looked where he pointed, saw movement: people on the basin floor
scattering at the daylight into the shadows of the opposite cliffwall. In spite
of the distance, their movements were plain in the clear air. She lifted her
binoculars from beneath her robe, focused the oil lenses on the distant people.
Kerchiefs fluttered like a flight of multicolored butterflies.

“That is home,” Stilgar said. “We will be there this night.” He stared
across the basin, tugging at his mustache. “My people stayed out overlate
working. That means there are no patrols about. I’ll signal them later and
they’ll prepare for us.”

“Your people show good discipline,” Jessica said. She lowered the
binoculars, saw that Stilgar was looking at them.

“They obey the preservation of the tribe,” he said. “It is the way we choose
among us for a leader. The leader is the one who is strongest, the one who
brings water and security.” He lifted his attention to her face.

She returned his stare, noted the whiteless eyes, the stained eyepits, the
dust-?rimmed beard and mustache, the line of the catchtube curving down from his
nostrils into his stillsuit.

“Have I compromised your leadership by besting you, Stilgar?” she asked.

“You did not call me out,” he said.

“It’s important that a leader keep the respect of his troop,” she said.

“Isn’t a one of those sandlice I cannot handle,” Stilgar said. “When you
bested me, you bested us all. Now, they hope to learn from you . . . the
weirding way . . . and some are curious to see if you intend to call me out.”

She weighed the implications. “By besting you in formal battle?”

He nodded. “I’d advise you against this because they’d not follow you.
You’re not of the sand. They saw this in our night’s passage.”

“Practical people,” she said.

“True enough.” He glanced at the basin. “We know our needs. But not many are
thinking deep thoughts now this close to home. We’ve been out overlong arranging
to deliver our spice quota to the free traders for the cursed Guild . . . may
their faces be forever black.”

Jessica stopped in the act of turning away from him, looked back up into his
face. “The Guild? What has the Guild to do with your spice?”

“It’s Liet’s command,” Stilgar said. “We know the reason, but the taste of
it sours us. We bribe the Guild with a monstrous payment in spice to keep our
skies clear of satellites and such that none may spy what we do to the face of
Arrakis.”

She weighed out her words, remembering that Paul had said this must be the
reason Arrakeen skies were clear of satellites. “And what is it you do to the
face of Arrakis that must not be seen?”

“We change it . . . slowly but with certainty . . . to make it fit for human
life. Our generation will not see it, nor our children nor our children’s
children nor the grandchildren of their children . . . but it will come.” He
stared with veiled eyes out over the basin. “Open water and tall green plants
and people walking freely without stillsuits.”

So that’s the dream of this Liet-?Kynes, she thought. And she said: “Bribes
are dangerous; they have a way of growing larger and larger.”

“They grow,” he said, “but the slow way is the safe way.”

Jessica turned, looked out over the basin, trying to see it the way Stilgar
was seeing it in his imagination. She saw only the grayed mustard stain of
distant rocks and a sudden hazy motion in the sky above the cliffs.

“Ah-?h-?h-?h,” Stilgar said.

She thought at first it must be a patrol vehicle, then realized it was a
mirage–another landscape hovering over the desert-?sand and a distant wavering
of greenery and in the middle distance a long worm traveling the surface with
what looked like Fremen robes fluttering on its back.

The mirage faded.

“It would be better to ride,” Stilgar said, “but we cannot permit a maker
into this basin. Thus, we must walk again tonight.”

Maker–their word for worm, she thought.

She measured the import of his words, the statement that they could not
permit a worm into this basin. She knew what she had seen in the mirage–Fremen
riding on the back of a giant worm. It took heavy control not to betray her
shock at the implications.

“We must be getting back to the others,” Stilgar said. “Else my people may
suspect I dally with you. Some already are jealous that my hands tasted your
loveliness when we struggled last night in Tuono Basin.”

“That will be enough of that!” Jessica snapped.

“No offense,” Stilgar said, and his voice was mild. “Women among us are not
taken against their will . . . and with you . . . ” He shrugged. “. . . even
that convention isn’t required.”

“You will keep in mind that I was a duke’s lady,” she said, but her voice
was calmer.

“As you wish,” he said. “It’s time to seal off this opening, to permit
relaxation of stillsuit discipline. My people need to rest in comfort this day.
Their families will give them little rest on the morrow.”

Silence fell between them.

Jessica stared out into the sunlight. She had heard what she had heard in
Stilgar’s voice–the unspoken offer of more than his countenance. Did he need a
wife? She realized she could step into that place with him. It would be one way
to end conflict over tribal leadership–female properly aligned with male.

But what of Paul then? Who could tell yet what rules of parenthood prevailed
here? And what of the unborn daughter she had carried these few weeks? What of a
dead Duke’s daughter? And she permitted herself to face fully the significance
of this other child growing within her, to see her own motives in permitting the
conception. She knew what it was–she had succumbed to that profound drive
shared by all creatures who are faced with death–the drive to seek immortality
through progeny. The fertility drive of the species had overpowered them.

Jessica glanced at Stilgar, saw that he was studying her, waiting. A
daughter born here to a woman wed to such a one as this man–what would be the
fate of such a daughter? she asked herself. Would he try to limit the
necessities that a Bene Gesserit must follow?

Stilgar cleared his throat and revealed then that he understood some of the
questions in her mind. “What is important for a leader is that which makes him a
leader. It is the needs of his people. If you teach me your powers, there may
come a day when one of us must challenge the other. I would prefer some
alternative.”

“There are several alternatives?” she asked.

“The Sayyadina,” he said. “Our Reverend Mother is old.”

Their Reverend Mother!
Before she could probe this, he said: “I do not necessarily offer myself as
mate. This is nothing personal, for you are beautiful and desirable. But should
you become one of my women, that might lead some of my young men to believe that
I’m too much concerned with pleasures of the flesh and not enough concerned with
the tribe’s needs. Even now they listen to us and watch us.”

A man who weighs his decisions, who thinks of consequences, she thought.

“There are those among my young men who have reached the age of wild
spirits,” he said. “They must be eased through this period. I must leave no
great reasons around for them to challenge me. Because I would have to maim and
kill among them. This is not the proper course for a leader if it can be avoided
with honor. A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob
from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a
people reverts to a mob.”

His words, the depth of their awareness, the fact that he spoke as much to
her as to those who secretly listened, forced her to reevaluate him.

He has stature, she thought. Where did he learn such inner balance?

“The law that demands our form of choosing a leader is a just law,” Stilgar
said. “But it does not follow that justice is always the thing a people needs.
What we truly need now is time to grow and prosper, to spread our force over
more land.”

What is his ancestry? she wondered. Whence comes such breeding? She said:
“Stilgar, I underestimated you.”

“Such was my suspicion,” he said.

“Each of us apparently underestimated the other,” she said.

“I should like an end to this,” he said. “I should like friendship with you
. . . and trust. I should like that respect for each other which grows in the
breast without demand for the huddlings of sex.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Do you trust me?”

“I hear your sincerity.”

“Among us,” he said, “the Sayyadina, when they are not the formal leaders,
hold a special place of honor. They teach. They maintain the strength of God
here.” He touched his breast.

Now I must probe this Reverend Mother mystery, she thought. And she said:
“You spoke of your Reverend Mother . . . and I’ve heard words of legend and
prophecy.”

“It is said that a Bene Gesserit and her offspring hold the key to our
future,” he said.

“Do you believe I am that one.”

She watched his face, thinking; The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings
are times of such great peril.

“We do not know,” he said.