Dune (64 page)

She thought of calling for coffee and with the thought came that ever-
present awareness of paradox in the Fremen way of life: how well they lived in
these sietch caverns compared to the graben pyons; yet, how much more they
endured in the open hajr of the desert than anything the Harkonnen bondsmen
endured.

A dark hand inserted itself through the hangings beside her, deposited a cup
upon the table and withdrew. From the cup arose the aroma of spiced coffee.

An offering from the birth celebration, Jessica thought.

She took the coffee and sipped it, smiling at herself. In what other society
of our universe, she asked herself, could a person of my station accept an
anonymous drink and quaff that drink without fear? I could alter any poison now
before it did me harm, or course, but the donor doesn’t realize this.

She drained the cup, feeling the energy and lift of its contents — hot and
delicious.

And she wondered what other society would have such a natural regard for her
privacy and comfort that the giver would intrude only enough to deposit the gift
and not inflict her with the donor? Respect and love had sent the gift — with
only a slight tinge of fear.

Another element of the incident forced itself into her awareness: she had
thought of coffee and it had appeared. There was nothing of telepathy here, she
knew. It was the tau, the oneness of the sietch community, a compensation from
the subtle poison of the spice diet they shared. The great mass of the people
could never hope to attain the enlightenment the spice seed brought to her; they
had not been trained and prepared for it. Their minds rejected what they could
not understand or encompass. Still they felt and reacted sometimes like a single
organism.

And the thought of coincidence never entered their minds.

Has Paul passed his test on the sand? Jessica asked herself. He’s capable,
but accident can strike down even the most capable.

The waiting.

It’s the dreariness, she thought. You can wait just so long. Then the
dreariness of the waiting overcomes you.

There was all manner of waiting in their lives.

More than two years we’ve been here, she thought, and twice that number at
least to go before we can even hope to think of trying to wrest Arrakis from the
Harkonnen governor, the Mudir Nahya, the Beast Rabban.

“Reverend Mother?”

The voice from outside the hangings at her door was that of Harah, the other
woman in Paul’s menage.

“Yes, Harah.”

The hangings parted and Harah seemed to glide through them. She wore sietch
sandals, a red-?yellow wraparound that exposed her arms almost to the shoulders.
Her black hair was parted in the middle and swept back like the wings of an
insect, flat and oily against her head. The jutting, predatory features were
drawn into an intense frown.

Behind Harah came Alia, a girl-?child of about two years.

Seeing her daughter, Jessica was caught as she frequently was by Alia’s
resemblance to Paul at that age — the same wide-?eyed solemnity to her questing
look, the dark hair and firmness of mouth. But there were subtle differences,
too, and it was in these that most adults found Alia disquieting. The child —
little more than a toddler — carried herself with a calmness and awareness
beyond her years. Adults were shocked to find her laughing at a subtle play of
words between the sexes. Or they’d catch themselves listening to her half-
lisping voice, still blurred as it was by an unformed soft palate, and discover
in her words sly remarks that could only be based on experiences no two-?year-?old
had ever encountered.

Harah sank to a cushion with an exasperated sigh, frowned at the child.

“Alia.” Jessica motioned to her daughter.

The child crossed to a cushion beside her mother, sank to it and clasped her
mother’s hand. The contact of flesh restored that mutual awareness they had
shared since before Alia’s birth. It wasn’t a matter of shared thoughts —
although there were bursts of that if they touched while Jessica was changing
the spice poison for a ceremony. It was something larger, an immediate awareness
of another living spark, a sharp and poignant thing, a nerve-?sympatico that made
them emotionally one.

In the formal manner that befitted a member of her son’s household, Jessica
said: “Subakh ul kuhar, Harah. This night finds you well?”
With the same traditional formality, she said: “Subakh un nar. I am well.”
The words were almost toneless. Again, she sighed.

Jessica sensed amusement from Alia.

“My brother’s ghanima is annoyed with me,” Alia said in her half-?lisp.

Jessica marked the term Alia used to refer to Harah — ghanima. In the
subtleties of the Fremen tongue, the word meant “something acquired in battle”
and with the added overtone that the something no longer was used for its
original purpose. An ornament, a spearhead used as a curtain weight.

Harah scowled at the child. “Don’t try to insult me, child. I know my
place.”

“What have you done this time, Alia?” Jessica asked.

Harah answered; “Not only has she refused to play with the other children
today, but she intruded where . . . ”

“I hid behind the hangings and watched Subiay’s child being born,” Alia
said. “It’s a boy. He cried and cried. What a set of lungs! When he’d cried long
enough –”

“She came out and touched him,” Harah said, “and he stopped crying. Everyone
knows a Fremen baby must get his crying done at birth, if he’s in sietch because
he can never cry again lest he betray us on hajr.”

“He’d cried enough,” Alia said. “I just wanted to feel his spark, his life.
That’s all. And when he felt me he didn’t want to cry anymore.”

“It’s just made more talk among the people,” Harah said.

“Subiay’s boy is healthy?” Jessica asked. She saw that something was
troubling Harah deeply and wondered at it.

“Healthy as any mother could ask,” Harah said. “They know Alia didn’t hurt
him. They didn’t so much mind her touching him. He settled down right away and
was happy. It was . . . ” Harah shrugged.

“It’s the strangeness of my daughter, is that it?” Jessica asked. “It’s the
way she speaks of things beyond her years and of things no child her age could
know — things of the past.”

“How could she know what a child looked like on Bela Tegeuse?” Harah
demanded.

“But he does!” Alia said, “Subiay’s boy looks just like the son of Mitha
born before the parting.”

“Alia!” Jessica said. “I warned you.”

“But, Mother, I saw it and it was true and . . . ”

Jessica shook her head, seeing the signs of disturbance in Harah’s face.
What have I borne? Jessica asked herself. A daughter who knew at birth
everything that I knew . . . and more: everything revealed to her out of the
corridors of the past by the Reverend Mothers within me.

“It’s not just the things she says,” Harah said. “It’s the exercises, too:
the way she sits and stares at a rock, moving only one muscle beside her nose,
or a muscle on the back of a finger, or –”

“Those are the Bene Gesserit training,” Jessica said. “You know that, Harah.
Would you deny my daughter her inheritance?”

“Reverend Mother, you know these things don’t matter to me,” Harah said.
“It’s the people and the way they mutter. I feel danger in it. They say your
daughter’s a demon, that other children refuse to play with her, that she’s –”

“She has so little in common with the other children,” Jessica said. “She’s
no demon. It’s just the –”

“Of course she’s not!”

Jessica found herself surprised at the vehemence in Harah’s tone, glanced
down at Alia. The child appeared lost in thought, radiating a sense of . . .
waiting. Jessica returned her attention to Harah.

“I respect the fact that you’re a member of my son’s household,” Jessica
said. (Alia stirred against her hand.) “You may speak openly with me of
whatever’s troubling you.”
“I will not be a member of your son’s household much longer,” Harah said.
“I’ve waited this long for the sake of my sons, the special training they
receive as the children of Usul. It’s little enough I could give them since it’s
known I don’t share your son’s bed.”

Again Alia stirred beside her, half-?sleeping, warm.

“You’d have made a good companion for my son, though,” Jessica said. And she
added to herself because such thoughts were ever with her: Companion . . . not a
wife. Jessica’s thoughts went then straight to the center, to the pang that came
from the common talk in the sietch that her son’s companionship with Chani had
become a permanent thing, the marriage.

I love Chani, Jessica thought, but she reminded herself that love might have
to step aside for royal necessity. Royal marriages had other reasons than love.

“You think I don’t know what you plan for your son?” Harah asked.

“What do you mean?” Jessica demanded.

“You plan to unite the tribes under Him,” Harah said.

“Is that bad?”

“I see danger for him . . . and Alia is part of that danger.”

Alia nestled closer to her mother, eyes opened now and studying Harah.

“I’ve watched you two together,” Harah said, “the way you touch. And Alia is
like my own flesh because she’s sister to one who is like my brother. I’ve
watched over her and guarded her from the time she was a mere baby, from the
time of the razzia when we fled here. I’ve seen many things about her.”

Jessica nodded, feeling disquiet begin to grow in Alia beside her.

“You know what I mean,” Harah said. “The way she knew from the first what we
were saying to her. When has there been another baby who knew the water
discipline so young? What other baby’s first words to her nurse were: ‘I love
you, Harah’?”

Harah stared at Alia. “Why do you think I accept her insults? I know there’s
no malice in them.”

Alia looked up at her mother.

“Yes, I have reasoning powers, Reverend Mother,” Harah said. “I could have
been of the Sayyadina. I have seen what I have seen.”

“Harah . . . ” Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.” And she felt
surprise at herself, because this literally was true.

Alia straightened, squared her shoulders. Jessica felt the sense of waiting
ended, an emotion compounded of decision and sadness.

“We made a mistake,” Alia said. “Now we need Harah.”

“It was the ceremony of the seed,” Harah said, “when you changed the Water
of Life, Reverend Mother, when Alia was yet unborn within you.”

Need Harah? Jessica asked herself.

“Who else can talk among the people and make them begin to understand me?”
Alia asked.

“What would you have her do?” Jessica asked.

“She already knows what to do,” Alia said.

“I will tell them the truth,” Harah said. Her face seemed suddenly old and
sad with its olive skin drawn into frown wrinkles, a witchery in the sharp
features. “I will tell them that Alia only pretends to be a little girl, that
she has never been a little girl.”

Alia shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks, and Jessica felt the wave of
sadness from her daughter as though the emotion were her own.

“I know I’m a freak,” Alia whispered. The adult summation coming from the
child mouth was like a bitter confirmation.

“You’re not a freak!” Harah snapped. “Who dared say you’re a freak?”

Again, Jessica marveled at the fierce note of protectiveness in Harah’s
voice. Jessica saw then that Alia had judged correctly — they did need Harah.
The tribe would understand Harah — both her words and her emotions — for it
was obvious she loved Alia as though this were her own child.
“Who said it?” Harah repeated.

“Nobody.”

Alia used a corner of Jessica’s aba to wipe the tears from her face. She
smoothed the robe where she had dampened and crumpled it.

“Then don’t you say it,” Harah ordered.

“Yes, Harah.”

“Now,” Harah said, “you may tell me what it was like so that I may tell the
others. Tell me what it is that happened to you.”

Alia swallowed, looked up at her mother.

Jessica nodded.

“One day I woke up,” Alia said. “It was like waking from sleep except that I
could not remember going to sleep. I was in a warm, dark place. And I was
frightened.”

Listening to the half-?lisping voice of her daughter, Jessica remembered that
day in the big cavern.

“When I was frightened,” Alia said, “I tried to escape, but there was no way
to escape. Then I saw a spark . . . but it wasn’t exactly like seeing it. The
spark was just there with me and I felt the spark’s emotions . . . soothing me,
comforting me, telling me that way that everything would be all right. That was
my mother.”

Harah rubbed at her eyes, smiled reassuringly at Alia. Yet there was a look
of wildness in the eyes of the Fremen woman, an intensity as though they, too,
were trying to hear Alia’s words.

And Jessica thought: What do we really know of how such a one thinks . . .
out of her unique experiences and training and ancestry?

“Just when I felt safe and reassured,” Alia said, “there, was another spark
with us . . . and everything was happening at once. The other spark was the old
Reverend Mother. She was . . . trading lives with my mother . . . everything . .
. and I was there with them, seeing it all . . . everything. And it was over,
and I was them and all the others and myself . . . only it took me a long time
to find myself again. There were so many others.”

“It was a cruel thing,” Jessica said. “No being should wake into
consciousness thus. The wonder of it is you could accept all that happened to
you.”

“I couldn’t do anything else!” Alia said. “I didn’t know how to reject or
hide my consciousness . . . or shut if off . . . everything just happened . . .
everything . . . ”

“We didn’t know,” Harah murmured. “When we gave your mother the Water to
change, we didn’t know you existed within her.”

“Don’t be sad about it, Harah,” Alia said. “I shouldn’t feel sorry for
myself. After all, there’s cause for happiness here: I’m a Reverend Mother. The
tribe has two Rev . . . ”