Dune (65 page)

She broke off, tipping her head to listen.

Harah rocked back on her heels against the sitting cushion, stared at Alia,
bringing her attention then up to Jessica’s face.

“Didn’t you suspect?” Jessica asked.

“Sh-?h-?h-?h,” Alia said.

A distant rhythmic chanting came to them through the hangings that separated
them from the sietch corridors. It grew louder, carrying distinct sounds now:
“Ya! Ya! Yawm! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, wallah! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, Wallah!”

The chanters passed the outer entrance, and their voices boomed through to
the inner apartments. Slowly the sound receded.

When the sound had dimmed sufficiently, Jessica began the ritual, the
sadness in her voice: “It was Ramadhan and April on Bela Tegeuse.”

“My family sat in their pool courtyard,” Harah said, “in air bathed by the
moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls,
round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and
baklawa and mugs of liban — all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens
and, in our flocks, there was peace . . . peace in all the land.“

”Life was full with happiness until the raiders came,“ Alia said.

”Blood ran cold at the scream of friends,“ Jessica said. And she felt the
memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared.

”La, la, la, the women cried,“ said Harah.

”The raiders came through the mushtamal, rushing at us with their knives
dripping red from the lives of our men,“ Jessica said.

Silence came over the three of them as it was in all the apartments of the
sietch, the silence while they remembered and kept their grief thus fresh.

Presently, Harah uttered the ritual ending to the ceremony, giving the words
a harshness that Jessica had never before heard in them.

”We will never forgive and we will never forget,“ Harah said.

In the thoughtful quiet that followed her words, they heard a muttering of
people, the swish of many robes. Jessica sensed someone standing beyond the
hangings that shielded her chamber.

”Reverend Mother?“

A woman’s voice, and Jessica recognized it: the voice of Tharthar, one of
Stilgar’s wives.

”What is it, Tharthar?“

”There is trouble, Reverend Mother.“

Jessica felt a constriction at her heart, an abrupt fear for Paul. ”Paul . .
.“ she gasped.

Tharthar spread the hangings, stepped into the chamber. Jessica glimpsed a
press of people in the outer room before the hangings fell. She looked up at
Tharthar — a small, dark woman in a red-?figured robe of black, the total blue
of her eyes trained fixedly on Jessica, the nostrils of her tiny nose dilated to
reveal the plug scars.

”What is it?“ Jessica demanded.

”There is word from the sand,“ Tharthar said. ”Usul meets the maker for his
test . . . it is today. The young men say he cannot fail, he will be a sandrider
by nightfall. The young men are banding for a razzia. They will raid in the
north and meet Usul there. They say they will raise the cry then. They say they
will force him to call out Stilgar and assume command of the tribes.“

Gathering water, planting the dunes, changing their world slowly but surely
– these are no longer enough, Jessica thought. The little raids, the certain
raids — these are no longer enough now that Paul and I have trained them. They
feel their power. They want to fight.

Tharthar shifted from one foot to the other, cleared her throat.

We know the need for cautious waiting, Jessica thought, but there’s the core
of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do
us. We lose our senses of purpose if the waiting’s prolonged.

”The young men say if Usul does not call out Stilgar, then he must be
afraid,“ Tharthar said.

She lowered her gaze.

”So that’s the way of it,“ Jessica muttered. And she thought: Well I saw it
coming. As did Stilgar.

Again, Tharthar cleared her throat. ”Even my brother, Shoab, says it,“ she
said. ”They will leave Usul no choice.“

Then it has come, Jessica thought. And Paul will have to handle it himself.
The Reverend Mother dare not become involved in the succession.

Alia freed her hand from her mother’s, said: ”I will go with Tharthar and
listen to the young men. Perhaps there is a way.“

Jessica met Tharthar’s gaze, but spoke to Alia: ”Go, then. And report to me
as soon as you can.“

”We do not want this thing to happen, Reverend Mother,” Tharthar said.
“We do not want it,” Jessica agreed. “The tribe needs all its strength.” She
glanced at Harah. “Will you go with them?”

Harah answered the unspoken part of the question: “Tharthar will allow no
harm to befall Alia. She knows we will soon be wives together, she and I, to
share the same man. We have talked, Tharthar and I.” Harah looked up at
Tharthar, back to Jessica. “We have an understanding.”

Tharthar held out a hand for Alia, said: “We must hurry. The young men are
leaving.”

They pressed through the hangings, the child’s hand in the small woman’s
hand, but the child seemed to be leading.

“If Paul-?Muad’Dib slays Stilgar, this will not serve the tribe,” Harah said.
“Always before, it has been the way of succession, but times have changed.”

“Times have changed for you, as well,” Jessica said.

“You cannot think I doubt the outcome of such a battle,” Harah said. “Usul
could not but win.”

“That was my meaning,” Jessica said.

“And you think my personal feelings enter into my judgment,” Harah said. She
shook her head, her water rings tinkling at her neck. “How wrong you are.
Perhaps you think, as well, that I regret not being the chosen of Usul, that I
am jealous of Chani?”

“You make your own choice as you are able,” Jessica said.

“I pity Chani,” Harah said.

Jessica stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“I know what you think of Chani,” Harah said. “You think she is not the wife
for your son.”

Jessica settled back, relaxed on her cushions. She shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“You could be right,” Harah said. “If you are, you may find a surprising
ally — Chani herself. She wants whatever is best for Him.”

Jessica swallowed past a sudden tightening in her throat. “Chani’s very dear
to me,” she said. “She could be no –”

“Your rugs are very dirty in here,” Harah said. She swept her gaze around
the floor, avoiding Jessica’s eyes. “So many people tramping through here all
the time. You really should have them cleaned more often.”

= = = = = =

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This
power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the
orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community
inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete
opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing
themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
-from “Muad’Dib: The Religious Issues” by the Princess Irulan

Paul waited on the sand outside the gigantic maker’s line of approach. I
must not wait like a smuggler — impatient and jittering, he reminded himself. I
must be part of the desert.

The thing was only minutes away now, filling the morning with the friction-
hissing of its passage. Its great teeth within the cavern-?circle of its mouth
spread like some enormous flower. The spice odor from it dominated the air.

Paul’s stillsuit rode easily on his body and he was only distantly aware of
his nose plugs, the breathing mask. Stilgar’s teaching, the painstaking hours on
the sand, overshadowed all else.

“How far outside the maker’s radius must you stand in pea sand?” Stilgar had
asked him.

And he had answered correctly: “Half a meter for every meter of the maker’s
diameter.”
“Why?”

“To avoid the vortex of its passage and still have time to run in and mount
it.”

“You’ve ridden the little ones bred for the seed and the Water of Life,”
Stilgar had said. “But what you’ll summon for your test is a wild maker, an old
man of the desert. You must have proper respect for such a one.”

Now the thumper’s deep drumming blended with the hiss of the approaching
worm. Paul breathed deeply, smelling mineral bitterness of sand even through his
filters. The wild maker, the old man of the desert, loomed, almost on him. Its
cresting front segments threw a sandwave that would sweep across his knees.

Come up, you lovely monster, he thought. Up. You hear me calling. Come up.
Come up.

The wave lifted his feet. Surface dust swept across him. He steadied
himself, his world dominated by the passage of that sand-?clouded curving wall,
that segmented cliff, the ring lines sharply defined in it.

Paul lifted his hooks, sighted along them, leaned in. He felt them bite and
pull. He leaped upward, planting his feet against that wall, leaning out against
the clinging barbs. This was the true instant of the testing: if he had planted
the hooks correctly at the leading edge of a ring segment, opening the segment,
the worm would not roll down and crush him.

The worm slowed. It glided across the thumper, silencing it. Slowly, it
began to roll — up, up — bringing those irritant barbs as high as possible,
away from the sand that threatened the soft inner lapping of its ring segment.

Paul found himself riding upright atop the worm. He felt exultant, like an
emperor surveying his world. He suppressed a sudden urge to cavort there, to
turn the worm, to show off his mastery of this creature.

Suddenly he understood why Stilgar had warned him once about brash young men
who danced and played with these monsters, doing handstands on their backs,
removing both hooks and replanting them before the worm could spill them.

Leaving one hook in place, Paul released the other and planted it lower down
the side. When the second hook was firm and tested, he brought down the first
one, thus worked his way down the side. The maker rolled, and as it rolled, it
turned, coming around the sweep of flour sand where the others waited.

Paul saw them come up, using their hooks to climb, but avoiding the
sensitive ring edges until they were on top. They rode at last in a triple line
behind him, steadied against their hooks.

Stilgar moved up through the ranks, checked the positioning of Paul’s hooks,
glanced up at Paul’s smiling face.

“You did it, eh?” Stilgar asked, raising his voice above the hiss of their
passage. “That’s what you think? You did it?” He straightened. “Now I tell you
that was a very sloppy job. We have twelve-?year-?olds who do better. There was
drumsand to your left where you waited. You could not retreat there if the worm
turned that way.”

The smile slipped from Paul’s face. “I saw the drumsand.”

“Then why did you not signal for one of us to take up position secondary to
you? It was a thing you could do even in the test.”

Paul swallowed, faced into the wind of their passage.

“You think it bad of me to say this now,” Stilgar said. “It is my duty. I
think of your worth to the troop. If you had stumbled into that drumsand, the
maker would’ve turned toward you.”

In spite of a surge of anger, Paul knew that Stilgar spoke the truth. It
took a long minute and the full effort of the training he had received from his
mother for Paul to recapture a feeling of calm. “I apologize,” he said. “It will
not happen again.”

“In a tight position, always leave yourself a secondary, someone to take the
maker if you cannot,” Stilgar said. “Remember that we work together. That way,
we’re certain. We work together, eh?”
He slapped Paul’s shoulder.

“We work together,” Paul agreed.

“Now,” Stilgar said, and his voice was harsh, “show me you know how to
handle a maker. Which side are we on?”

Paul glanced down at the scaled ring surface on which they stood, noted the
character and size of the scales, the way they grew larger off to his right,
smaller to his left. Every worm, he knew, moved characteristically with one side
up more frequently. As it grew older, the characteristic up-?side became an
almost constant thing. Bottom scales grew larger, heavier, smoother. Top scales
could be told by size alone on a big worm.

Shifting his hooks, Paul moved to the left. He motioned flankers down to
open segments along the side and keep the worm on a straight course as it
rolled. When he had it turned, he motioned two steersmen out of the line and
into positions ahead.

“Ach, haiiiii-?yoh!” he shouted in the traditional call. The left-?side
steersman opened a ring segment there.

In a majestic circle, the maker turned to protect its opened segment. Full
around it came and when it was headed back to the south, Paul shouted: “Geyrat!”

The steersman released his hook. The maker lined out in a straight course.

Stilgar said. “Very good, Paul Muad’Dib. With plenty of practice, you may
yet become a sandrider.”

Paul frowned, thinking: Was I not first up?

From behind him there came sudden laughter. The troop began chanting,
flinging his name against the sky.

“Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

And far to the rear along the worm’s surface, Paul heard the beat of the
goaders pounding the tail segments. The worm began picking up speed. Their robes
flapped in the wind. The abrasive sound of their passage increased.

Paul looked back through the troop, found Chani’s face among them. He looked
at her as he spoke to Stilgar. “Then I am a sandrider, Stil?”

“Hal yawm! You are a sandrider this day.”

“Then I may choose our destination?”

“That’s the way of it.”

“And I am a Fremen born this day here in the Habbanya erg. I have had no
life before this day. I was as a child until this day.”

“Not quite a child,” Stilgar said. He fastened a corner of his hood where
the wind was whipping it.