Road to Dune (38 page)

“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever it was … it was out there … quite a ways.”

She felt Paul move under her hand. Her son’s first hope was to melt into the protective coloration among the people here, to sink back into the people. But first they had to find them.

“I feel some kind of handle on the wall over here,” he whispered.

“Careful,” she said. She moved her hand along his arm, groped fingers over his and onto cold metal: a bar in a vertical slot. The bar had been pushed to the top of its slot.

“It felt like a hydraulic latch,” Paul said. “The kind they have on shipboard for airtight doors.”

Airtight,
she thought.
Sandtight.

Gently, she pulled down the bar.

A crack of luminosity opened before them—a vertical rectangle.

“It
is
a door,” Paul whispered.

“Shhhh,” she cautioned.

She pushed the door and it swung wide onto more blackness broken by two puddles of radiance beyond the opening. She recognized the glowing spots for what they were—footswitches.

“Inside,” she ordered. “Stay close. Keep hold of me.”

They slipped through the doorway, and she pulled it closed behind. The sound of the sandstorm dropped to a distant mewing. The air around them felt old—touched with dust … and faintly cinnamon.

Jessica probed into the black with her senses, felt no living thing except themselves.

“What’re those two glowing pieces?” Paul whispered.

She spoke aloud, shaping confidence into her tone. “Footswitches. This must be where the’copter’s hidden, the one Dr. Kynes said was at the end of the tunnel.” She extended an arm, moved it to set up air currents, sensed a gross object. “Be careful you don’t bump into it.”

“I’m thirsty,” Paul said.

“Maybe there’ll be water in the’copter,” she said. She took his shoulder, crept forward to the puddles of radiance on the floor: two glowing circles enclosing black designs. One held a rayflash—it was a light switch. The other was bisected by a straight line—a door control. She touched the rayflash with her toe.

Light drove back the darkness.

Jessica darted her glance around the revealed room, testing it. The ornicopter was there in front of them, sealed beneath a transparent cover. Around it, an irregular space had been carved from the native rock and closed away from the outside by a flat expanse of metal. The place was just big enough to maneuver around the squat shape of the ornicopter.

“It’s a big one,” Paul said. “I wonder …”

She motioned him to silence, listening: The faint shrilling of the storm was punctuated now by interval chirps, a tiny whistling. Some of the sound came from above and behind them. She turned, looked up at broken rock.

“What’s that?” Paul whispered.

“I don’t …”

A flurry of birdwings shocked her to silence. A feathered shape shot across the room over their heads, darted into a cranny on the opposite wall. The chirping whistles arose to a new height, slowly died away.

“A bird,” she sighed. “It has a nest in there.”

“It looked like a little owl,” Paul said. “But how could it get in here?”

“There’s dust,” she said. She pointed to the cover on the ornicopter and to the floor. “There must be a small hole in the rocks somewhere.” She moved forward to the shield over the ornicopter. “Help me uncover this thing.”

Dust filled the air as they rolled back the cover. Paul sneezed. And Jessica recalled the precautionary lectures on this planet.
Nose filters,
she thought.
We’ll have to find nose filters somewhere.
She slipped into the’copter, tested one set of its twin controls.

Paul, right behind her, looked up from an examination of the panel and the interior walls. “It has no battle shield,” he said.

“It’s not a battle craft,” she said. She looked left and right at the spread of wings, the delicate metal interleaving that could open to lift them in a soaring glide or compress for jet-driven speed.

“What’re those things on the rear seat?” Paul asked.

She turned, followed the direction of his pointing finger. Two low mounds of black fabric. She had taken them for cushions, saw now that they were shaped to fit a human back, that they had adjustable straps—packs. She reached back, flipped one over. It was surprisingly heavy and gave off a gurgling sound. Orange lettering came into view. She read it aloud: “Emergency use only. Contents: stilltent, one; literjons, four; energy caps …”

“Literjons,” Paul said. “That’s what it said on a water machine at the landing field. ‘Fill literjons here.’ Could that mean water?”

“Yes.” She continued reading, feeling the rigors of this planet press in on her with every word: “Energy caps, sixty; recaths, two; burnooses, two; distrans, one; medkit, one; digger, one; sandsnork, one; stillsuits, two; repkit, one; baradye pistol, one; sinkchart, one; filtplugs, eight; paracompass, one; instructs, one.”

“What’s a recath?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. She dropped her attention to the handwritten addition, below the printing, and in the same orange : “Fremkit, one; thumpers, four.”

Paul said. “Thumper?”

“I suppose there’ll be an instruction manual,” she said. Out of the pack’s ziptop came a micro-manual with a magnifier and glowtab for turning the miniscule pages.

“Stilltent,” Paul read. “Saaaay … it reclaims the water that evaporates from your body.” He bent over the book, reading: “Breath reclamation—breathe through the dry-pass tube at all times. Remember, if your stay in the desert may be extended, that all moisture must be conserved. Make sure you wear the recath and its collection bottle at all times. See instructions for correct use of catheter equip …” He glanced down the page. “Mother! Do we drink …”

“Hush,” she said. “If it’s purified, water is water. What do you think we drank on the spaceship coming here?”

“But …”

“Go on reading,” she ordered.
When my water is gone,
she thought,
Paul will still have some left.
“Our lives depend on how well we learn this. You’ll see here, it says people have worn catheters for months at a time without ill effect, but we can expect some irritation from them at first.”

“I don’t like it,” he said. His voice sounded sullen.

“What don’t you like?” she asked. “Living?”

He looked up at her, then back to the book. Presently, he bent over it, reading and examining the things from the pack.

Stillsuits. They were like a tent, only to be worn at all times.

Nose filters. She showed him how to install them.

Within an hour they had finished the manual and followed its instructions, escaping out to the open sands. They wore the light plastic stillsuits beneath sand-colored robes. A stilltent covered them with its snorkel protruding upward along a rock face.

Only a rough package marked “fremkit” remained to be examined from Jessica’s pack. She opened it. Out puffed a pastel blue kerchief that fluttered gauzily as she lifted it. Beneath the kerchief lay what appeared to be a knife in a sheath and a small package marked thumpers. On the thumper package was scrawled: “See instructions for calling sandworms inside.”

“Calling a sandworm,” Paul said. “Who’d want to?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She pulled the knife from its sheath. The blade was about twenty centimeters long, four-edged, and made of some milkwhite cloudy substance. She held it up, looked down the point. It had a cross-section in the shape of a shallow X and the tip was pierced by a hair-sized hole.

Poison?
she wondered.

The handle felt warm and resilient beneath her fingers. She hesitated on the point of squeezing the handle, decided against it. She put the knife back in its sheath for later examination when they were out of the tent.

There remained now the flat little case labeled distrans, which was a distress transmitter, and the baradye pistol. She slipped the transmitter back into the pack, hefted the pistol. The instructions said it could be fired into the sand and would spread a patch of orange dye about twenty meters in diameter.

“What’s this?” Paul asked. He lifted a tiny booklet out of the fremkit.

Jessica took it, opened it to the first page.

Handwritten!

The script was small but legible without the magnifier. The glowtab picked out the words. She read, and as she read, excitement grew in her. Not so much for the instructions contained there, but for what they implied.

It opened with two prayers:

“God give us water in torrents that we may bring forth vegetation and grain and gardens luxuriant.”

And:

“May the fire of God set a cooling light over thy heart.”

It was called, she read, “The Kitab al-ibar, the
azhar
book, giving the
ayat
and
burhan
of life. Believe on these things and al-lat will not burn you.”

She turned the page.

“What is it?” Paul asked.

She spoke as she read: “It’s a book telling how to live in the desert on the things of the desert. How to use the things you find in the desert.” She turned another page, read a sentence, and looked up at him. “Paul, a thing like this couldn’t
be
unless there were an entire culture behind it.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are people who live in the desert, or at least on the edges of it, people who call themselves ‘Fremen,’ probably meaning Free-men.” She looked at him. “If we could find them. If …” She turned back to the book, continued reading.

Paul turned, opened his own pack, burrowed in it for his own fremkit.

She spoke absently as she read: “Be careful of the knife in there. I think it has a poison tip.”

Presently, both of them were reading: two little glowtab spots in the glowglobe dusk of the tent.

Paul looked up through the transparent end of the tent. He pointed to a cluster of stars. “That’s the constellation of the Mouse. Its tail points north.”

“There’s much to learn,” she said. She adjusted the filtertube over her mouth, glanced at him. “Do you still have the gun Dr. Yueh gave you?”

He patted the sash beneath his robes.

“I presume Gurney has instructed you on such weapons.”

“Yes. Why?”

“If we meet … when we meet these Fremen, they may not accept strangers easily.”

“And they might not expect a child to be armed,” he said. He touched the shield stud beneath his robes. “Nor shielded.”

“In case the need arises,” she said.

And Paul thought:
She is right. Grown men might not suspect I’m no longer a child.

She straightened, listening. “Hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“The absence of a thing is as important as its presence,” she said. “Never forget that.”

“The storm,” he said. “I can’t hear the wind.” He looked back at the packs, flicked his tongue across his lips, thinking of the water. But if the storm … if it was still dark out there. They needed darkness.

Jessica watched his face in the instant it took these thoughts to flick through his mind. She felt sadness and approval at the look of adult decision on his features.

“It’ll still be dark outside,” he said. “Best we take advantage of it.”

She spoke with a crisp edge to give him confidence. “Right. Strap yourself in while I see to the door.”

“I can do that,” he said.

MUAD’DIB

M
ovement caught Paul’s attention. He stared down through smoke bushes and weeds into a wedged slab sand surface of moonlight inhabited by an up-hop, jump, pop-hop of motion.

“Kangaroo mice!” he hissed.

Pop-hop-hop!

Into shadows and out.

Paul untied the line around him, slipped out of his pack. He reached down to the ground for a handful of pebbles.

Jessica watched him, wondering.

Paul moved forward. He stayed in shadows, creeping—graceful cat movements.

Slam!

The handful of pebbles hurtled into the sand clearing. Two tiny creatures lay writhing. He was on them in one lithe pounce—cracked their necks.

Slowly, Paul looked back up at his mother. His burnoose was a grey sliding of motion.

The hunter,
she thought.
The animal. Now, he must return to humanity. He must do it by himself.

“We won’t starve,” Paul said.

“Indeed we won’t,” she agreed.

“They have blood,” he said. “It’s …” He shook his head. “Well, if we have to … if we can’t find water.”

She nodded.

He looked down at the mice, one in each hand. “They were so beautiful,” he said.

Jessica smiled. Her cracked lips hurt with the movement.

“They’ll save our lives,” he said, “if we can’t find other food. I’ll never forget them.”

She nodded. He was coming back.

“We’d best make a fire to cook them,” he said.

“Above all, the human is practical,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing, dear. I’ll help gather twigs for the fire. We can make it here against the cliff where it won’t be seen very far.”

Deleted Scenes and Chapters from
Dune Messiah

ORIGINAL OPENING SUMMARY FOR
DUNE MESSIAH

T
he Bene Gesserits operated for centuries behind the mask of a semi-mystical school while actually carrying on a selective breeding program among humans. When the program appeared to reach its goal they held their inevitable “trial of fact.” The records of that trial in the case of the Prophet Muad’Dib betray the school’s ignorance of what it had done.

It may be argued that they could examine only such facts as were available to them and had no direct access to the person of Muad’Dib. But the Bene Gesserits had surmounted great obstacles and their ignorance here goes deeper.

The program had as its target the breeding of a person they labeled the Kwisatz Haderach, meaning “the one who can be many places at once.” In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with powers of mind that would permit him to understand and use higher-order dimensions.