Dune (77 page)

The Emperor’s entourage could be heard approaching now, his Sardaukar
humming one of their marching tunes to keep up their spirits. There came a
murmur of voices at the entrance and Gurney Halleck passed through the guard,
crossed to confer with Stilgar, then moved to Paul’s side, a strange look in His
eyes.

Will I lose Gurney, too? Paul wondered. The way I lost Stilgar — losing a
friend to gain a creature?

“They have no throwing weapons,” Gurney said. “I’ve made sure of that
myself.” He glanced around the room, seeing Paul’s preparations. “Feyd-?Rautha
Harkonnen is with them. Shall I cut him out?”

“Leave him.”

“There’re some Guild people, too, demanding special privileges, threatening
an embargo against Arrakis. I told them I’d give you their message.”

“Let them threaten.”

“Paul!” Jessica hissed behind him. “He’s talking about the Guild!”

“I’ll pull their fangs presently,” Paul said.
And he thought then about the Guild — the force that had specialized for so
long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life
upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword . . . and now they could
not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of
specializing on the melange awareness-?spectrum narcotic for their navigators.
They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they’d
existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce
a new host when the old one died.

The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal
decision: they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward
into stagnation.

Let them look closely at their new host, Paul thought.

“There’s also a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who says she’s a friend of
your mother,” Gurney said.

“My mother has no Bene Gesserit friends.”

Again, Gurney glanced around the Great Hall, then bent close to Paul’s ear.
“Thufir Hawat’s with ‘em, m’Lord. I had no chance to see him alone, but he used
our old hand signs to say he’s been working with the Harkonnens, thought you
were dead. Says he’s to be left among ‘em.”

“You left Thufir among those –”

“He wanted it . . . and I thought it best. If . . . there’s something wrong,
he’s where we can control him. If not — we’ve an ear on the other side.”

Paul thought then of prescient glimpses into the possibilities of this
moment — and one time-?line where Thufir carried a poisoned needle which the
Emperor commanded he use against “this upstart Duke.”

The entrance guards stepped aside, formed a short corridor of lances. There
came a murmurous swish of garments, feet rasping the sand that had drifted into
the Residency.

The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV led his people into the hall. His burseg
helmet had been lost and the red hair stood out in disarray. His uniform’s left
sleeve had been ripped along the inner seam. He was beltless and without
weapons, but his presence moved with him like a force-?shield bubble that kept
his immediate area open.

A Fremen lance dropped across his path, stopped him where Paul had ordered.
The others bunched up behind, a montage of color, of shuffling and of staring
faces.

Paul swept his gaze across the group, saw women who hid signs of weeping,
saw the lackeys who had come to enjoy grandstand seats at a Sardaukar victory
and now stood choked to silence by defeat. Paul saw the bird-?bright eyes of the
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam glaring beneath her black hood, and beside
her the narrow furtiveness of Feyd-?Rautha Harkonnen.

There’s a face time betrayed to me, Paul thought.

He looked beyond Feyd-?Rautha then, attracted by a movement, seeing there a
narrow, weaselish face he’d never before encountered — not in time or out of
it. It was a face he felt he should know and the feeling carried with it a
marker of fear.

Why should I fear that man? he wondered.

He leaned toward his mother, whispered: “That man to the left of the
Reverend Mother, the evil-?looking one — who is that?”

Jessica looked, recognizing the face from her Duke’s dossiers. “Count
Fenring,” she said. “The one who was here immediately before us. A genetic-
eunuch . . . and a killer.”

The Emperor’s errand boy, Paul thought. And the thought was a shock crashing
across his consciousness because he had seen the Emperor in uncounted
associations spread through the possible futures–but never once had Count
Fenring appeared within those prescient visions.
It occurred to Paul then that he had seen his own dead body along countless
reaches of the time web, but never once had he seen his moment of death.

Have I been denied a glimpse of this man because he is the one who kills me?
Paul wondered.

The thought sent a pang of foreboding through him. He forced his attention
away from Fenring, looked now at the remnants of Sardaukar men and officers, the
bitterness on their faces and the desperation. Here and there among them, faces
caught Paul’s attention briefly: Sardaukar officers measuring the preparations
within this room, planning and scheming yet for a way to turn defeat into
victory.

Paul’s attention came at last to a tall blonde woman, green-?eyed, a face of
patrician beauty, classic in its hauteur, untouched by tears, completely
undefeated. Without being told it, Paul knew her — Princess Royal, Bene
Gesserit — trained, a face that time vision had shown him in many aspects:
Irulan.

There’s my key, he thought.

Then he saw movement in the clustered people, a face and figure emerged —
Thufir Hawat, the seamed old features with darkly stained lips, the hunched
shoulders, the look of fragile age about him.

“There’s Thufir Hawat,” Paul said. “Let him stand free, Gurney.”

“M’Lord,” Gurney said.

“Let him stand free,” Paul repeated.

Gurney nodded.

Hawat shambled forward as a Fremen lance was lifted and replaced behind him.
The rheumy eyes peered at Paul, measuring, seeking.

Paul stepped forward one pace, sensed the tense, waiting movement of the
Emperor and his people.

Hawat’s gaze stabbed past Paul, and the old man said: “Lady Jessica, I but
learned this day how I’ve wronged you in my thoughts. You needn’t forgive.”

Paul waited, but his mother remained silent.

“Thufir, old friend,” Paul said, “as you can see, my back is toward no
door.”

“The universe is full of doors,” Hawat said.

“Am I my father’s son?” Paul asked.

“More like your grandfather’s,” Hawat rasped. “You’ve his manner and the
look of him in your eyes.”

“Yet I’m my father’s son,” Paul said. “For I say to you, Thufir, that in
payment for your years of service to my family you may now ask anything you wish
of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours.” Paul
stepped forward a pace, hands at his side, seeing the look of awareness grow in
Hawat’s eyes.

He realizes that I know of the treachery, Paul thought.

Pitching his voice to carry in a half-?whisper for Hawat’s ears alone, Paul
said: “I mean this, Thufir. If you’re to strike me, do it now.”

“I but wanted to stand before you once more, my Duke,” Hawat said. And Paul
became aware for the first time of the effort the old man exerted to keep from
falling. Paul reached out, supported Hawat by the shoulders, feeling the muscle
tremors beneath his hands.

“Is there pain, old friend?” Paul asked.

“There is pain, my Duke,” Hawat agreed, “but the pleasure is greater.” He
half turned in Paul’s arms, extended his left hand, palm up, toward the Emperor,
exposing the tiny needle cupped against the fingers. “See, Majesty?” he called.
“See your traitor’s needle? Did you think that I who’ve given my life to service
of the Atreides would give them less now?”

Paul staggered as the old man sagged in his arms, felt the death there, the
utter flaccidity. Gently, Paul lowered Hawat to the floor, straightened and
signed for guardsmen to carry the body away.
Silence held the hall while his command was obeyed.

A look of deadly waiting held the Emperor’s face now. Eyes that had never
admitted fear admitted it at last.

“Majesty,” Paul said, and noted the jerk of surprised attention in the tall
Princess Royal. The words had been uttered with the Bene Gesserit controlled
atonals, carrying in it every shade of contempt and scorn that Paul could put
there.

Bene-?Gesserit trained indeed, Paul thought.

The Emperor cleared his throat, said: “Perhaps my respected kinsman believes
he has things all his own way now. Nothing could be more remote from fact. You
have violated the Convention, used atomics against –”

“I used atomics against a natural feature of the desert,” Paul said. “It was
in my way and I was in a hurry to get to you, Majesty, to ask your explanation
for some of your strange activities.”

“There’s a massed armada of the Great Houses in space over Arrakis right
now,” the Emperor said. “I’ve but to say the word and they’ll –”

“Oh, yes,” Paul said, “I almost forgot about them.” He searched through the
Emperor’s suite until he saw the faces of the two Guildsmen, spoke aside to
Gurney. “Are those the Guild agents, Gurney, the two fat ones dressed in gray
over there?”

“Yes, m’Lord.”

“You two,” Paul said, pointing. “Get out of there immediately and dispatch
messages that will get that fleet on its way home. After this, you’ll ask my
permission before –”

“The Guild doesn’t take your orders!” the taller of the two barked. He and
his companion pushed through to the barrier lances, which were raised at a nod
from Paul. The two men stepped out and the taller leveled an arm at Paul, said:
“You may very well be under embargo for your –”

“If I hear any more nonsense from either of you,” Paul said, “I’ll give the
order that’ll destroy all spice production on Arrakis . . . forever.”

“Are you mad?” the tall Guildsman demanded. He fell back half a step.

“You grant that I have the power to do this thing, then?” Paul asked.

The Guildsman seemed to stare into space for a moment, then: “Yes, you could
do it, but you must not.”

“Ah-?h-?h,” Paul said and nodded to himself. “Guild navigators, both of you,
eh?”

“Yes!”

The shorter of the pair said: “You would blind yourself, too, and condemn us
all to slow death. Have you any idea what it means to be deprived of the spice
liquor once you’re addicted?”

“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever,” Paul said.
“The Guild is crippled. Humans become little isolated clusters on their isolated
planets. You know, I might do this thing out of pure spite . . . or out of
ennui.”

“Let us talk this over privately,” the taller Guildsman said. “I’m sure we
can come to some compromise that is –”

“Send the message to your people over Arrakis,” Paul said. “I grow tired of
this argument. If that fleet over us doesn’t leave soon there’ll be no need for
us to talk.” He nodded toward his communications men at the side of the hall.
“You may use our equipment.”

“First we must discuss this,” the tall Guildsman said. “We cannot just –”

“Do it!” Paul barked. “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control
over it. You’ve agreed I have that power. We are not here to discuss or to
negotiate or to compromise. You will obey my orders or suffer the immediate
consequences!”

“He means it,” the shorter Guildsman said. And Paul saw the fear grip them.

Slowly the two crossed to the Fremen communications equipment.
“Will they obey?” Gurney asked.

“They have a narrow vision of time,” Paul said. “They can see ahead to a
blank wall marking the consequences of disobedience. Every Guild navigator on
every ship over us can look ahead to that same wall. They’ll obey.”

Paul turned back to look at the Emperor, said: “When they permitted you to
mount your father’s throne, it was only on the assurance that you’d keep the
spice flowing. You’ve failed them, Majesty. Do you know the consequences?”

“Nobody permitted me to –”

“Stop playing the fool,” Paul barked. “The Guild is like a village beside a
river. They need the water, but can only dip out what they require. They cannot
dam the river and control it, because that focuses attention on what they take,
it brings down eventual destruction. The spice flow, that’s their river, and I
have built a dam. But my dam is such that you cannot destroy it without
destroying the river.”

The Emperor brushed a hand through his red hair, glanced at the backs of the
two Guildsmen.

“Even your Bene Gesserit Truthsayer is trembling,” Paul said. “There are
other poisons the Reverend Mothers can use for their tricks, but once they’ve
used the spice liquor, the others no longer work.”

The old woman pulled her shapeless black robes around her, pressed forward
out of the crowd to stand at the barrier lances.

“Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam,” Paul said. “It has been a long time
since Caladan, hasn’t it?”

She looked past him at his mother, said: “Well, Jessica, I see that your son
is indeed the one. For that you can be forgiven even the abomination of your
daughter.”

Paul stilled a cold, piercing anger, said: “You’ve never had the right or
cause to forgive my mother anything!”

The old woman locked eyes with him.

“Try your tricks on me, old witch,” Paul said. “Where’s your gom jabbar? Try
looking into that place where you dare not look! You’ll find me there staring
out at you!”

The old woman dropped her gaze.

“Have you nothing to say?” Paul demanded.

“I welcomed you to the ranks of humans,” she muttered. “Don’t besmirch
that.”

Paul raised his voice: “Observe her, comrades! This is a Bene Gesserit
Reverend Mother, patient in a patient cause. She could wait with her sisters —
ninety generations for the proper combination of genes and environment to
produce the one person their schemes required. Observe her! She knows now that
the ninety generations have produced that person. Here I stand . . . but . . . I
. . . will . . . never . . . do . . . her . . . bidding!”