Dune (73 page)

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And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel
poised to spin.
-from “Arrakis Awakening” by the Princess Irulan

“Will you look at that thing!” Stilgar whispered.

Paul lay beside him in a slit of rock high on the Shield Wall rim, eye fixed
to the collector of a Fremen telescope. The oil lens was focused on a starship
lighter exposed by dawn in the basin below them. The tall eastern face of the
ship glistened in the flat light of the sun, but the shadow side still showed
yellow portholes from glowglobes of the night. Beyond the ship, the city of
Arrakeen lay cold and gleaming in the light of the northern sun.

It wasn’t the lighter that excited Stilgar’s awe, Paul knew, but the
construction for which the lighter was only the centerpost. A single metal
hutment, many stories tall, reached out in a thousand-?meter circle from the base
of the lighter — a tent composed of interlocking metal leaves — the temporary
lodging place for five legions of Sardaukar and His Imperial Majesty, the
Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.

From his position squatting at Paul’s left, Gurney Halleck said: “I count
nine levels to it. Must be quite a few Sardaukar in there.”

“Five legions,” Paul said.

“It grows light,” Stilgar hissed. “We like it not, your exposing yourself,
Muad’Dib. Let us go back into the rocks now.”

“I’m perfectly safe here,” Paul said.

“That ship mounts projectile weapons,” Gurney said.

“They believe us protected by shields,” Paul said. “They wouldn’t waste a
shot on an unidentified trio even if they saw us.”

Paul swung the telescope to scan the far wall of the basin, seeing the
pockmarked cliffs, the slides that marked the tombs of so many of his father’s
troopers. And he had a momentary sense of the fitness of things that the shades
of those men should look down on this moment. The Harkonnen forts and towns
across the shielded lands lay in Fremen hands or cut away from their source like
stalks severed from a plant and left to wither. Only this basin and its city
remained to the enemy.

“They might try a sortie by ‘thopter,” Stilgar said. “If they see us.”

“Let them,” Paul said. “We’ve ‘thopters to burn today . . . and we know a
storm is coming.”

He swung the telescope to the far side of the Arrakeen landing field now, to
the Harkonnen frigates lined up there with a CHOAM Company banner waving gently
from its staff on the ground beneath them. And he thought of the desperation
that had forced the Guild to permit these two groups to land while all the
others were held in reserve. The Guild was like a man testing the sand with his
toe to gauge its temperature before erecting a tent.

“Is there anything new to see from here?” Gurney asked. “We should be
getting under cover. The storm is coming.”

Paul returned his attention on the giant hutment. “They’ve even brought
their women,” he said. “And lackeys and servants. Ah-?h-?h, my dear Emperor, how
confident you are.”

“Men are coming up the secret way,” Stilgar said. “It may be Otheym and
Korba returning.”

“All right, Stil,” Paul said. “We’ll go back.”

But he took one final look around through the telescope — studying the
plain with its tall ships, the gleaming metal hutment, the silent city, the
frigates of the Harkonnen mercenaries. Then he slid backward around a scarp of
rock. His place at the telescope was taken by a Fedaykin guardsman.

Paul emerged into a shallow depression in the Shield Wall’s surface. It was
a place about thirty meters in diameter and some three meters deep, a natural
feature of the rock that the Fremen had hidden beneath a translucent camouflage
cover. Communications equipment was clustered around a hole in the wall to the
right. Fedaykin guards deployed through the depression waited for Muad’Dib’s
command to attack.

Two men emerged from the hole by the communications equipment, spoke to the
guards there.

Paul glanced at Stilgar, nodded in the direction of the two men. “Get their
report, Stil.”

Stilgar moved to obey.
Paul crouched with his back to the rock, stretching his muscles,
straightened. He saw Stilgar sending the two men back into that dark hole in the
rock, thought about the long climb down that narrow man-?made tunnel to the floor
of the basin.

Stilgar crossed to Paul.

“What was so important that they couldn’t send a cielago with the message?”
Paul asked.

“They’re saving their birds for the battle,” Stilgar said. He glanced at the
communications equipment, back to Paul. “Even with a tight beam, it is wrong to
use those things, Muad’Dib. They can find you by taking a bearing on its
emission.”

“They’ll soon be too busy to find me,” Paul said. “What did the men report?”

“Our pet Sardaukar have been released near Old Gap low on the rim and are on
their way to their master. The rocket launchers and other projectile weapons are
in place. The people are deployed as you ordered. It was all routine.”

Paul glanced across the shallow bowl, studying his men in the filtered light
admitted by the camouflage cover. He felt time creeping like an insect working
its way across an exposed rock.

“It’ll take our Sardaukar a little time afoot before they can signal a troop
carrier,” Paul said.

“They are being watched?”

“They are being watched,” Stilgar said.

Beside Paul, Gurney Halleck cleared his throat. “Hadn’t we best be getting
to a place of safety?”

“There is no such place,” Paul said. “Is the weather report still
favorable?”

“A great grandmother of a storm coming,” Stilgar said. “Can you not feel it,
Muad’Dib?”

“The air does feel chancy,” Paul agreed. “But I like the certainty of poling
the weather.”

“The storm’ll be here in the hour,” Stilgar said. He nodded toward the gap
that looked out on the Emperor’s hutment and the Harkonnen frigates. “They know
it there, too. Not a ‘thopter in the sky. Everything pulled in and tied down.
They’ve had a report on the weather from their friends in space.”

“Any more probing sorties?” Paul asked.

“Nothing since the landing last night,” Stilgar said. “They know we’re here.
I think now they wait to choose their own time.”

“We choose the time,” Paul said.

Gurney glanced upward, growled: “If they let us.”

“That fleet’ll stay in space,” Paul said.

Gurney shook his head.

“They have no choice,” Paul said. “We can destroy the spice. The Guild dares
not risk that.”

“Desperate people are the most dangerous,” Gurney said.

“Are we not desperate?” Stilgar asked.

Gurney scowled at him.

“You haven’t lived with the Fremen dream,” Paul cautioned. “Stil is thinking
of all the water we’ve spent on bribes, the years of waiting we’ve added before
Arrakis can bloom. He’s not –”

“Arrrgh,” Gurney scowled.

“Why’s he so gloomy?” Stilgar asked.

“He’s always gloomy before a battle,” Paul said. “It’s the only form of good
humor Gurney allows himself.”

A slow, wolfish grin spread across Gurney’s face, the teeth showing white
above the chip cup of his stillsuit. “It glooms me much to think on all the poor
Harkonnen souls we’ll dispatch unshriven,” he said.

Stilgar chuckled. “He talks like a Fedaykin.”
“Gurney was born a death commando,” Paul said. And he thought: Yes, let them
occupy their minds with small talk be fore we test ourselves against that force
on the plain. He looked to the gap in the rock wall and back to Gurney, found
that the troubadour-?warrior had resumed a brooding scowl.

“Worry saps the strength,” Paul murmured. “You told me that once, Gurney.”

“My Duke,” Gurney said, “my chief worry is the atomics. If you use them to
blast a hole in the Shield Wall . . . ”

“Those people up there won’t use atomics against us,” Paul said. “They don’t
dare . . . and for the same reason that they cannot risk our destroying the
source of the spice.”

“But the injunction against –”

“The injunction!” Paul barked. “It’s fear, not the injunction that keeps the
Houses from hurling atomics against each other. The language of the Great
Convention is clear enough: ‘Use of atomics against humans shall be cause for
planetary obliteration.’ We’re going to blast the Shield Wall, not humans.”

“It’s too fine a point,” Gurney said.

“The hair-?splitters up there will welcome any point,” Paul said. “Let’s talk
no more about it.”

He turned away, wishing he actually felt that confident. Presently, he said:
“What about the city people? Are they in position yet?”

“Yes,” Stilgar muttered.

Paul looked at him. “What’s eating you?”

“I never knew the city man could be trusted completely,” Stilgar said.

“I was a city man myself once,” Paul said.

Stilgar stiffened. His face grew dark with blood. “Muad’Dib knows I did not
mean –”

“I know what you meant, Stil. But the test of a man isn’t what you think
he’ll do. It’s what he actually does. These city people have Fremen blood. It’s
just that they haven’t yet learned how to escape their bondage. We’ll teach
them.”

Stilgar nodded, spoke in a rueful tone: “The habits of a lifetime, Muad’Dib.
On the Funeral Plain we learned to despise the men of the communities.”

Paul glanced at Gurney, saw him studying Stilgar. “Tell us, Gurney, why were
the city folk down there driven from their homes by the Sardaukar?”

“An old trick, my Duke. They thought to burden us with refugees.”

“It’s been so long since guerrillas were effective that the mighty have
forgotten how to fight them,” Paul said. “The Sardaukar have played into our
hands. They grabbed some city women for their sport, decorated their battle
standards with the heads of the men who objected. And they’ve built up a fever
of hate among people who otherwise would’ve looked on the coming battle as no
more than a great inconvenience . . . and the possibility of exchanging one set
of masters for another. The Sardaukar recruit for us, Stilgar.”

“The city people do seem eager,” Stilgar said.

“Their hate is fresh and clear,” Paul said. “That’s why we use them as shock
troops.”

“The slaughter among them will be fearful,” Gurney said.

Stilgar nodded agreement.

“They were told the odds,” Paul said. “They know every Sardaukar they kill
will be one less for us. You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for.
They’ve discovered they’re a people. They’re awakening.”

A muttered exclamation came from the watcher at the telescope. Paul moved to
the rock slit, asked: “What is it out there?”

“A great commotion, Muad’Dib,” the watcher hissed. “At that monstrous metal
tent. A surface car came from Rimwall West and it was like a hawk into a nest of
rock partridge.”

“Our captive Sardaukar have arrived,” Paul said.
“They’ve a shield around the entire landing field now,” the watcher said. “I
can see the air dancing even to the edge of the storage yard where they kept the
spice.”

“Now they know who it is they fight,” Gurney said. “Let the Harkonnen beasts
tremble and fret themselves that an Atreides yet lives!”

Paul spoke to the Fedaykin at the telescope. “Watch the flagpole atop the
Emperor’s ship. If my flag is raised there –”

“It will not be,” Gurney said.

Paul saw the puzzled frown on Stilgar’s face, said: “If the Emperor
recognized my claim, he’ll signal by restoring the Atreides flag to Arrakis.
We’ll use the second plan then, move only against the Harkonnens. The Sardaukar
will stand aside and let us settle the issue between ourselves.”

“I’ve no experience with these offworld things,” Stilgar said. “I’ve heard
of them, but it seems unlikely the –”

“You don’t need experience to know what they’ll do,” Gurney said.

“They’re sending a new flag up on the tall ship,” the watcher said. “The
flag is yellow . . . with a black and red circle in the center.”

“There’s a subtle piece of business,” Paul said. “The CHOAM Company flag.”

“It’s the same as the flag at the other ships,” the Fedaykin guard said.

“I don’t understand,” Stilgar said.

“A subtle piece of business indeed,” Gurney said. “Had he sent up the
Atreides banner, he’d have had to live by what that meant. Too many observers
about. He could’ve signaled with the Harkonnen flag on his staff — a flat
declaration that’d have been. But, no — he sends up the CHOAM rag. He’s telling
the people up there . . . ” Gurney pointed toward space. “ . . . where the
profit is. He’s saying he doesn’t care if it’s an Atreides here or not.”

“How long till the storm strikes the Shield Wall?” Paul asked.

Stilgar turned away, consulted one of the Fedaykin in the bowl. Presently,
he returned, said: “Very soon, Muad’Dib. Sooner than we expected. It’s a great-
great-?grandmother of a storm . . . perhaps even more than you wished.”

“It’s my storm,” Paul said, and saw the silent awe on the faces of the
Fedaykin who heard him. “Though it shook the entire world it could not be more
than I wished. Will it strike the Shield Wall full on?”

“Close enough to make no difference,” Stilgar said.

A courier crossed from the hole that led down into the basin, said: “The
Sardaukar and Harkonnen patrols are pulling back, Muad’Dib.”

“They expect the storm to spill too much sand into the basin for good
visibility,” Stilgar Said. “They think we’ll be in the same fix.”

“Tell our gunners to set their sights well before visibility drops,” Paul
said. “They must knock the nose off every one of those ships as soon as the
storm has destroyed the shields.” He stepped to the wall of the bowl, pulled
back a fold of the camouflage cover and looked up at the sky. The horsetail
twistings of blow sand could be seen against the dark of the sky. Paul restored
the cover, said: “Start sending our men down, Stil.”

“Will you not go with us?” Stilgar asked.