Dune (56 page)

“It was Harkonnen treachery,” someone hissed. “They made it seem an accident
. . . lost in the desert . . . a ‘thopter crash . . . ”

Paul felt a burst of anger. The man who had befriended them, helped save
them from the Harkonnen hunters, the man who had sent his Fremen cohorts
searching for two strays in the desert . . . another victim of the Harkonnens.

“Does Usul hunger yet for revenge?” Farok asked.

Before Paul could answer, there came a low call and the troop swept forward
into a wider chamber, carrying Paul with them. He found himself in an open space
confronted by Stilgar and a strange woman wearing a flowing wraparound garment
of brilliant orange and green. Her arms were bare to the shoulders, and he could
see she wore no stillsuit. Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from
her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose
between the dense darkness of her eyes.

She turned toward him, and Paul saw golden rings threaded with water tallies
dangling from her ears.

“This bested my Jamis?” she demanded.

“Be silent, Harah,” Stilgar said. “It was Jamis’ doing–he invoked the
tahaddi al-?burhan.”

“He’s not but a boy!” she said. She gave her head a sharp shake from side to
side, setting the water tallies to jingling. “My children made fatherless by
another child? Surely, ’twas an accident!”

“Usul, how many years have you?” Stilgar asked.

“Fifteen standard,” Paul said.

Stilgar swept his eyes over the troop. “Is there one among you cares to
challenge me?”

Silence.

Stilgar looked at the woman. “Until I’ve learned his weirding ways. I’d not
challenge him.”

She returned his stare. “But–”

“You saw the stranger, woman who went with Chani to the Reverend Mother?”
Stilgar asked. “She’s an out-?freyn Sayyadina, mother to this lad. The mother and
son are masters of the weirding ways of battle.”

“Lisan al-?Gaib,” the woman whispered. Her eyes held awe as she turned them
back toward Paul.

The legend again, Paul thought.
“Perhaps,” Stilgar said. “It hasn’t been tested, though.” He returned his
attention to Paul. “Usul, it’s our way that you’ve now the responsibility for
Jamis’ woman here and for his two sons. His yali . . . his quarters, are yours.
His coffee service is yours . . . and this, his woman.”

Paul studied the woman, wondering: Why isn’t she mourning her man? Why does
she show no hate for me? Abruptly, he saw that the Fremen were staring at him,
waiting.

Someone whispered: “There’s work to do. Say how you accept her.”

Stilgar said: “Do you accept Harah as woman or servant?”

Harah lifted her arms, turning slowly on one heel. “I am still young, Usul.
It’s said I still look as young as when I was with Geoff . . . before Jamis
bested him.”

Jamis killed another to win her, Paul thought.

Paul said: “If I accept her as servant, may I yet change my mind at a later
time?”

“You’d have a year to change your decision,” Stilgar said. “After that,
she’s a free woman to choose as she wishes . . . or you could free her to choose
for herself at any time. But she’s your responsibility, no matter what, for one
year . . . and you’ll always share some responsibility for the sons of Jamis.”

“I accept her as servant,” Paul said.

Harah stamped a foot, shook her shoulders with anger. “But I’m young!”

Stilgar looked at Paul, said: “Caution’s a worthy trait in a man who’d
lead.”

“But I’m young!” Harah repeated.

“Be silent,” Stilgar commanded. “If a thing has merit, it’ll be. Show Usul
to his quarters and see he has fresh clothing and a place to rest.”

“Oh-?h-?h-?h!” she said.

Paul had registered enough of her to have a first approximation. He felt the
impatience of the troop, knew many things were being delayed here. He wondered
if he dared ask the whereabouts of his mother and Chani, saw from Stilgar’s
nervous stance that it would be a mistake.

He faced Harah, pitched his voice with tone and tremolo to accent her fear
and awe, said: “Show me my quarters, Harah! We will discuss your youth another
time.”

She backed away two steps, cast a frightened glance at Stilgar. “He has the
weirding voice,” she husked.

“Stilgar,” Paul said. “Chani’s father put heavy obligation on me. If there’s
anything . . . ”

“It’ll be decided in council,” Stilgar said. “You can speak then.” He nodded
in dismissal, turned away with the rest of the troop following him.

Paul took Harah’s arm, noting how cool her flesh seemed, feeling her
tremble. “I’ll not harm you, Harah,” he said. “Show me our quarters.” And he
smoothed his voice with relaxants.

“You’ll not cast me out when the year’s gone?” she said. “I know for true
I’m not as young as once I was.”

“As long as I live you’ll have a place with me,” he said. He released her
arm. “Come now, where are our quarters?”

She turned, led the way down the passage, turning right into a wide cross
tunnel lighted by evenly spaced yellow overhead globes. The stone floor was
smooth, swept clean of sand.

Paul moved up beside her, studied the aquiline profile as they walked. “You
do not hate me, Harah?”

“Why should I hate you?”

She nodded to a cluster of children who stared at them from the raised ledge
of a side passage. Paul glimpsed adult shapes behind the children partly hidden
by filmy hangings.

“I . . . bested Jamis.”
“Stilgar said the ceremony was held and you’re a friend of Jamis.” She
glanced sidelong at him. “Stilgar said you gave moisture to the dead. Is that
truth?”

“Yes.”

“It’s more than I’ll do . . . can do.”

“Don’t you mourn him?”

“In the time of mourning, I’ll mourn him.”

They passed an arched opening. Paul looked through it at men and women
working with stand-?mounted machinery in a large, bright chamber. There seemed an
extra tempo of urgency to them.

“What’re they doing in there?” Paul asked.

She glanced back as they passed beyond the arch, said: “They hurry to finish
the quota in the plastics shop before we flee. We need many dew collectors for
the planting.”

“Flee?”

“Until the butchers stop hunting us or are driven from our land.”

Paul caught himself in a stumble, sensing an arrested instant of time,
remembering a fragment, a visual projection of prescience–but it was displaced,
like a montage in motion. The bits of his prescient memory were not quite as he
remembered them.

“The Sardaukar hunt us,” he said.

“They’ll not find much excepting an empty sietch or two,” she said. “And
they’ll find their share of death in the sand.”

“They’ll find this place?” he asked.

“Likely.”

“Yet we take the time to . . . ” He motioned with his head toward the arch
now far behind them. “ . . . make . . . dew collectors?”

“The planting goes on.”

“What’re dew collectors?” he asked.

The glance she turned on him was full of surprise. “Don’t they teach you
anything in the . . . wherever it is you come from?”

“Not about dew collectors.”

“Hai!” she said, and there was a whole conversation in the one word.

“Well, what are they?”

“Each bush, each weed you see out there in the erg,” she said, “how do you
suppose it lives when we leave it? Each is planted most tenderly in its own
little pit. The pits are filled with smooth ovals of chromoplastic. Light turns
them white. You can see them glistening in the dawn if you look down from a high
place. White reflects. But when Old Father Sun departs, the chromoplastic
reverts to transparency in the dark. It cools with extreme rapidity. The surface
condenses moisture out of the air. That moisture trickles down to keep our
plants alive.”

“Dew collectors,” he muttered, enchanted by the simple beauty of such a
scheme.

“I’ll mourn Jamis in the proper time for it,” she said, as though her mind
had not left his other question. “He was a good man, Jamis, but quick to anger.
A good provider, Jamis, and a wonder with the children. He made no separation
between Geoff’s boy, my firstborn, and his own true son. They were equal in his
eyes.” She turned a questing stare on Paul. “Would it be that way with you,
Usul?”

“We don’t have that problem.”

“But if–”

“Harah!”

She recoiled at the harsh edge in his voice.

They passed another brightly lighted room visible through an arch on their
left. “What’s made there?” he asked.
“They repair the weaving machinery,” she said. “But it must be dismantled by
tonight.” She gestured at a tunnel branching to their left. “Through there and
beyond, that’s food processing and stillsuit maintenance.” She looked at Paul.
“Your suit looks new. But if it needs work, I’m good with suits. I work in the
factory in season.”

They began coming on knots of people now and thicker clusterings of openings
in the tunnel’s sides. A file of men and women passed them carrying packs that
gurgled heavily, the smell of spice strong about them.

“They’ll not get our water,” Harah said. “Or our spice. You can be sure of
that.”

Paul glanced at the openings in the tunnel walls, seeing the heavy carpets
on the raised ledge, glimpses of rooms with bright fabrics on the walls, piled
cushions. People in the openings fell silent at their approach, followed Paul
with untamed stares.

“The people find it strange you bested Jamis,” Harah said. “Likely you’ll
have some proving to do when we’re settled in a new sietch.”

“I don’t like killing,” he said.

“Thus Stilgar tells it,” she said, but her voice betrayed her disbelief.

A shrill chanting grew louder ahead of them. They came to another side
opening wider than any of the others Paul had seen. He slowed his pace, staring
in at a room crowded with children sitting cross-?legged on a maroon-?carpeted
floor.

At a chalkboard against the far wall stood a woman in a yellow wraparound, a
projecto-?stylus in one hand. The board was filled with designs–circles, wedges
and curves, snake tracks and squares, flowing arcs split by parallel lines. The
woman pointed to the designs one after the other as fast as she could move the
stylus, and the children chanted in rhythm with her moving hand.

Paul listened, hearing the voices grow dimmer behind as he moved deeper into
the sietch with Harah.

“Tree,” the children chanted. “Tree, grass, dune, wind, mountain, hill,
fire, lightning, rock, rocks, dust, sand, heat, shelter, heat, full, winter,
cold, empty, erosion, summer, cavern, day, tension, moon, night, caprock,
sandtide, slope, planting, binder . . . ”

“You conduct classes at a time like this?” Paul asked.

Her face went somber and grief edged her voice: “What Liet taught us, we
cannot pause an instant in that. Liet who is dead must not be forgotten. It’s
the Chakobsa way.”

She crossed the tunnel to the left, stepped up onto a ledge, parted gauzy
orange hangings and stood aside: “Your yali is ready for you, Usul.”

Paul hesitated before joining her on the ledge. He felt a sudden reluctance
to be alone with this woman. It came to him that he was surrounded by a way of
life that could only be understood by postulating an ecology of ideas and
values. He felt that this Fremen world was fishing for him, trying to snare him
in its ways. And he knew what lay in that snare–the wild jihad, the religious
war he felt he should avoid at any cost.

“This is your yali,” Harah said. “Why do you hesitate?”

Paul nodded, joined her on the ledge. He lifted the hangings across from
her, feeling metal fibers in the fabric, followed her into a short entrance way
and then into a larger room, square, about six meters to a side–thick blue
carpets on the floor, blue and green fabrics hiding the rock walls, glowglobes
tuned to yellow overhead bobbing against draped yellow ceiling fabrics.

The effect was that of an ancient tent.

Harah stood in front of him, left hand on hip, her eyes studying his face.
“The children are with a friend,” she said. “They will present themselves
later.”

Paul masked his unease beneath a quick scanning of the room. Thin hangings
to the right, he saw, partly concealed a larger room with cushions piled around
the walls. He felt a soft breeze from an air duct, saw the outlet cunningly
hidden in a pattern of hangings directly ahead of him.

“Do you wish me to help you remove your stillsuit?” Harah asked.

“No . . . thank you.”

“Shall I bring food?”

“Yes.”

“There is a reclamation chamber off the other room.” She gestured. “For your
comfort and convenience when you’re out of your stillsuit.”

“You said we have to leave this sietch,” Paul said. “Shouldn’t we be packing
or something?”

“It will be done in its time,” she said. “The butchers have yet to penetrate
to our region.”

Still she hesitated, staring at him.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“You’ve not the eyes of the Ibad,” she said. “It’s strange but not entirely
unattractive.”

“Get the food,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

She smiled at him–a knowing, woman’s smile that he found disquieting. “I am
your servant,” she said, and whirled away in one lithe motion, ducking behind a
heavy wall hanging that revealed another passage before falling back into place.

Feeling angry with himself, Paul brushed through the thin hanging on the
right and into the larger room. He stood there a moment caught by uncertainty.
And he wondered where Chani was . . . Chani who had just lost her father.

We’re alike in that, he thought.

A wailing cry sounded from the outer corridors, its volume muffled by the
intervening hangings. It was repeated, a bit more distant. And again. Paul
realized someone was calling the time. He focused on the fact that he had seen
no clocks.

The faint smell of burning creosote bush came to his nostrils, riding on the
omnipresent stink of the sietch. Paul saw that he had already suppressed the
odorous assault on his senses.