Children of Dune

Chapter Eight

Farad'n was acutely conscious of a sour spice smell from the old man. It emanated from the long grey robe which covered his body.
"Is that mask truly a part of your flesh?" Farad'n asked, realizing he was trying to delay the subject of dreams.
"While I wear it," the old man said, and his voice carried a bitter twang and just a suggestion of Fremen accent. "Your dream," he said. "Tell me."
Farad'n shrugged. Why not? That was why Tyek had brought the old man. Or was it? Doubts gripped Farad'n and he asked: "Are you truly a practitioner of oneiromancy?"
"I have come to interpret your dream, Puissant Lord."
Again Farad'n shrugged. This masked figure made him nervous and he glanced at Tyekanik, who remained where he had stopped, arms folded, staring at the fountain.
"Your dream, then," the old man pressed.
Farad'n inhaled deeply, began to relate the dream. It became easier to talk as he got fully into it. He told about the water flowing upward in the well, about the worlds which were atoms dancing in his head, about the snake which transformed itself into a sandworm and exploded in a cloud of dust. Telling about the snake, he was surprised to discover, required more effort. A terrible reluctance inhibited him and this made him angry as he spoke.
The old man remained impassive as Farad'n at last fell silent. The black gauze mask moved slightly to his breathing. Farad'n waited. The silence continued.
Presently Farad'n asked: "Aren't you going to interpret my dream?"
"I have interpreted it," he said, his voice seeming to come from a long distance.
"Well?" Farad'n heard his own voice squeaking, telling him the tension his dream had produced.
Still the old man remained impassively silent.
"Tell me, then!" The anger was obvious in his tone.
"I said I'd interpret," the old man said. "I did not agree to tell you my interpretation."
Even Tyekanik was moved by this, dropping his arms into balled fists at his sides. "What?" he grated.
"I did not say I'd reveal my interpretation," the old man said.
"You wish more pay?" Farad'n asked.
"I did not ask pay when I was brought here." A certain cold pride in the response softened Farad'n's anger. This was a brave old man, at any rate. He must know death could follow disobedience.
"Allow me, My Prince," Tyekanik said as Farad'n started to speak. Then: "Will you tell us why you won't reveal your interpretation?"
"Yes, My Lords. The dream tells me there would be no purpose in explaining these things."
Farad'n could not contain himself. "Are you saying I already know the meaning of my dream?"
"Perhaps you do, My Lord, but that is not my gist."
Tyekanik moved up to stand beside Farad'n. Both glared at the old man. "Explain yourself," Tyekanik said.
"Indeed," Farad'n said.
"If I were to speak of this dream, to explore these matters of water and dust, snakes and worms, to analyze the atoms which dance in your head as they do in mine - ahh, Puissant Lord, my words would only confuse you and you would insist upon misunderstanding."
"Do you fear that your words might anger me?" Farad'n demanded.
"My Lord! You're already angry."
"Is it that you don't trust us?" Tyekanik asked.
"That is very close to the mark, My Lord. I do not trust either of you and for the simple reason that you do not trust yourselves."
"You walk dangerously close to the edge," Tyekanik said. "Men have been killed for behavior less abusive than yours."
Farad'n nodded, said: "Don't tempt us to anger."
"The fatal consequences of Corrino anger are well known, My Lord of Salusa Secundus," the old man said.
Tyekanik put a restraining hand on Farad'n's arm, asked: "Are you trying to goad us into killing you?"
Farad'n had not thought of that, felt a chill now as he considered what such behavior might mean. Was this old man who called himself Preacher... was he more than he appeared? What might be the consequences of his death? Martyrs could be dangerous creations.
"I doubt that you'll kill me no matter what I say," The Preacher said. "I think you know my value, Bashar, and your Prince now suspects it."
"You absolutely refuse to interpret his dream?" Tyekanik asked.
"I have interpreted it."
"And you will not reveal what you see in it?"
"Do you blame me, My Lord?"
"How can you be valuable to me?" Farad'n asked.
The Preacher held out his right hand. "If I but beckon with this hand, Duncan Idaho will come to me and he will obey me."
"What idle boast is this?" Farad'n asked.
But Tyekanik shook his head, recalling his argument with Wensicia. He said: "My Prince, it could be true. This Preacher has many followers on Dune."
"Why didn't you tell me he was from that place?" Farad'n asked.
Before Tyekanik could answer. The Preacher addressed Farad'n: "My Lord, you must not feel guilty about Arrakis. You are but a product of your times. This is a special pleading which any man may make when his guilts assail him."
"Guilts!" Farad'n was outraged.
The Preacher only shrugged.
Oddly, this shifted Farad'n from outrage to amusement. He laughed, throwing his head back, drawing a startled glance from Tyekanik. Then: "I like you,. Preacher."
"This gratifies me, Prince," the old man said.
Suppressing a chuckle, Farad'n said: "We'll find you an apartment here in the palace. You will be my official interpreter of dreams - even though you never give me a word of interpretation. And you can advise me about Dune, I have a great curiosity about that place."
"This I cannot do, Prince."
An edge of his anger returned. Farad'n glared at the black mask. "And why not, pray tell?"
"My Prince," Tyekanik said, again touching Farad'n's arm.
"What is it, Tyek?"
"We brought him here under bonded agreement with the Guild. He is to be returned to Dune."
"I am summoned back to Arrakis," The Preacher said.
"Who summons you?" Farad'n demanded.
"A power greater than thine, Prince."
Farad'n shot a questioning glance at Tyekanik. "Is he an Atreides spy?"
"Not likely, My Prince. Alia has put a price on his head."
"If it's not the Atreides, then who summons you?" Farad'n asked, returning his attention to The Preacher.
"A power greater than the Atreides."
A chuckle escaped Farad'n. This was only mystic nonsense. How could Tyek be fooled by such stuff? This Preacher had been summoned - most likely by a dream. Of what importance were dreams?
"This has been a waste of time, Tyek," Farad'n said. "Why did you subject me to this... this farce?"
"There is a double price here, My Prince," Tyekanik said. "This interpreter of dreams promised me to deliver Duncan Idaho as an agent of House Corrino. All he asked was to meet you and interpret your dream." And Tyekanik added to himself: Or so he told Wensicia! New doubts assailed the Bashar.
"Why is my dream so important to you, old man?" Farad'n asked.
"Your dream tells me that great events move toward a logical conclusion," The Preacher said. "I must hasten my return."
Mocking, Farad'n said: "And you will remain inscrutable, giving me no advice."
"Advice, Prince, is a dangerous commodity. But I will venture a few words which you may take as advice or in any other way which pleases you."
"By all means," Farad'n said.
The Preacher held his masked face rigidly confronting Farad'n. "Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women... which way the wind blows on a certain day... a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God."
Farad'n found himself profoundly stirred by these words and could not explain his emotion.
Tyekanik, however, had focused on one phrase. Why did this Preacher speak of a garment? Tyekanik's mind focused on the Imperial costumes dispatched to the Atreides twins, the tigers trained to attack. Was this old man voicing a subtle warning? How much did he know?
"How is this advice?" Farad'n asked.
"If you would succeed," The Preacher said, "you must reduce your strategy to its point of application. Where does one apply strategy? At a particular place and with a particular people in mind. But even with the greatest concern for minutiae, some small detail with no significance attached to it will escape you. Can your strategy, Prince, be reduced to the ambitions of a regional governor's wife?"
His voice cold, Tyekanik interrupted: "Why do you harp upon strategy, Preacher? What is it you think My Prince will have?"
"He is being led to desire a throne," The Preacher said. "I wish him good luck, but he will need much more than luck."
"These are dangerous words," Farad'n said. "How is it you dare such words?"
"Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities," The Preacher said. "I dare such words because you stand at a crossroad. You could become admirable. But now you are surrounded by those who do not seek moral justifications, by advisers who are strategy oriented. You are young and strong and tough, but you lack a certain advanced training by which your character might evolve. This is sad because you have weaknesses whose dimensions I have described."
"What do you mean?" Tyekanik demanded.
"Have a care when you speak," Farad'n said. "What is this weakness?"
"You've given no thought to the kind of society you might prefer," The Preacher said. "You do not consider the hopes of your subjects. Even the form of the Imperium which you seek has little shape in your imaginings." He turned his masked face toward Tyekanik. "Your eye is upon the power, not upon its subtle uses and its perils. Your future is filled, thus, with manifest unknowns: with arguing women, with coughs and windy days. How can you create an epoch when you cannot see every detail? Your tough mind will not serve you. This is where you are weak."
Farad'n studied the old man for a long space, wondering at the deeper issues implied by such thoughts, at the persistence of such discredited concepts. Morality! Social goals! These were myths to put beside belief in an upward movement of evolution.
Tyekanik said: "We've had enough words. What of the price agreed upon, Preacher?"
"Duncan Idaho is yours," The Preacher said. "Have a care how you use him. He is a jewel beyond price."
"Oh, we've a suitable mission for him," Tyekanik said. He glanced at Farad'n. "By your leave, My Prince?"
"Send him packing before I change my mind," Farad'n said. Then, glaring at Tyekanik: "I don't like the way you've used me, Tyek!"
"Forgive him, Prince," The Preacher said. "Your faithful Bashar does God's will without even knowing it." Bowing, The Preacher departed, and Tyekanik hurried to see him away.
Farad'n watched the retreating backs, thought: I must look into this religion which Tyek espouses. And he smiled ruefully. What a dream interpreter! But what matter? My dream was not an important thing.
= = = = = =
And he saw a vision of armor. The armor was not his own skin; it was stronger than plasteel. Nothing penetrated his armor - not knife or poison or sand, not the dust of the desert or its desiccating heat. In his right hand he carried the power to make the Coriolis storm, to shake the earth and erode it into nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the Golden Path and in his left hand he carried the scepter of absolute mastery. And beyond the Golden Path, his eyes looked into eternity which he knew to be the food of his soul and of his everlasting flesh. -Heighia, My Brother's Dream from The Book of Ghanima
"It'd be better for me never to become Emperor," Leto said. "Oh, I don't imply that I've made my father's mistake and peered into the future with a glass of spice. I say this thing out of selfishness. My sister and I desperately need a time of freedom when we can learn how to live with what we are."
He fell silent, stared questioningly at the Lady Jessica. He'd spoken his piece as he and Ghanima had agreed. Now what would be their grandmother's response?
Jessica studied her grandson in the low light of glowglobes which illuminated her quarters in Sietch Tabr. It was still early morning of her second day here and she'd already had disturbing reports that the twins had spent a night of vigil outside the sietch. What were they doing? She had not slept well and she felt fatigue acids demanding that she come down from the hyper-level which had sustained her through all the demanding necessities since that crucial performance at the spaceport. This was the sietch of her nightmares - but outside, that was not the desert she remembered. Where have all the flowers come from? And the air around her felt too damp. Stillsuit discipline was lax among the young.
"What are you, child, that you need time to learn about yourself?" she asked.
He shook his head gently, knowing it to be a bizarre gesture of adulthood on a child's body, reminding himself that he must keep this woman off balance. "First, I am not a child. Oh..." He touched his chest. "This is a child's body; no doubt of that. But I am not a child."
Jessica chewed her upper lip, disregarding what this betrayed. Her Duke, so many years dead on this accursed planet, had laughed at her when she did this. "Your one unbridled response," he'd called that chewing of the lip. "It tells me that you're disturbed, and I must kiss those lips to still their fluttering."
Now this grandson who bore the name of her Duke shocked her into heart-pounding stillness merely by smiling and saying: "You are disturbed; I see it by the fluttering of those lips."
It required the most profound discipline of her Bene Gesserit training to restore a semblance of calm. She managed: "Do you taunt me?"
"Taunt you? Never. But I must make it clear to you how much we differ. Let me remind you of that sietch orgy so long ago when the Old Reverend Mother gave you her lives and her memories. She tuned herself to you and gave you that... that long chain of sausages, each one a person. You have them yet. So you know something of what Ghanima and I experience."
"And Alia?" Jessica asked, testing him.
"Didn't you discuss that with Ghani?"
"I wish to discuss it with you."
"Very well. Alia denied what she was and became that which she most feared. The past-within cannot be relegated to the unconscious. That is a dangerous course for any human, but for us who are pre-born, it is worse than death. And that is all I will say about Alia."
"So you're not a child," Jessica said.
"I'm millions of years old. That requires adjustments which humans have never before been called upon to make."
Jessica nodded, calmer now, much more cautious than she'd been with Ghanima. And where was Ghanima? Why had Leto come here alone?
"Well, grandmother," he said, "are we Abominations or are we the hope of the Atreides?"
Jessica ignored the question. "Where is your sister?"
"She distracts Alia to keep us from being disturbed. It is necessary. But Ghani would say nothing more to you than I've said. Didn't you observe that yesterday?"
"What I observed yesterday is my affair. Why do you prattle about Abomination?"
"Prattle? Don't give me your Bene Gesserit cant, grandmother. I'll feed it back to you, word for word, right out of your own memories. I want more than the fluttering of your lips."
Jessica shook her head, feeling the coldness of this... person who carried her blood. The resources at his disposal daunted her. She tried to match his tone, asked: "What do you know of my intentions?"
He sniffed. "You needn't inquire whether I've made the mistake my father made. I've not looked outside our garden of time - at least not by seeking it out. Leave absolute knowledge of the future to those moments of deja vu which any human may experience. I know the trap of prescience. My father's life tells me what I need to know about it. No, grandmother: to know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. I require more freedom than that."
Jessica felt her tongue twitch with unspoken words. How could she respond to him with something he didn't already know? This was monstrous! He's me! He's my beloved Leto! This thought shocked her. Momentarily she wondered if the childish mask might not lapse into those dear features and resurrect... No!
Leto lowered his head, looked upward to study her. Yes, she could be maneuvered after all. He said: "When you think of prescience, which I hope is rarely, you're probably no different from any other. Most people imagine how nice it would be to know tomorrow's quotation on the price of whale fur. Or whether a Harkonnen will once more govern their homeworld of Giedi Prime? But of course we know the Harkonnens without prescience, don't we, grandmother?"
She refused to rise to his baiting. Of course he would know about the cursed Harkonnen blood in his ancestry.
"Who is a Harkonnen?" he asked, goading. "Who is Beast Rabban? Any one of us, eh? But I digress. I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made - and lost - on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death - what a hellish gift that'd be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he'd be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance - over and over and over and over and over and..."
Leto shook his head. "Ignorance has its advantages. A universe of surprises is what I pray for!"
It was a long speech and, as she listened, Jessica marveled at how his mannerisms, his intonations, echoed his father - her lost son. Even the ideas: these were things Paul might have said.
"You remind me of your father," she said.
"Is that hurtful to you?"
"In a way, but it's reassuring to know he lives on in you."
"How little you understand of how he lives on in me."
Jessica found his tone flat but dripping bitterness. She lifted her chin to look directly at him.
"Or how your Duke lives in me," Leto said. "Grandmother, Ghanima is you! She's you to such an extent that your life holds not a single secret from her up to the instant you bore our father. And me! What a catalogue of fleshly recordings am I. There are moments when it is too much to bear. You come here to judge us? You come here to judge Alia? Better that we judge you!"
Jessica demanded answer of herself and found none. What was he doing? Why this emphasis on his difference? Did he court rejection? Had he reached Alia's condition - Abomination?
"This disturbs you," he said.
"It disturbs me." She permitted herself a futile shrug. "Yes, it disturbs me - and for reasons you know full well. I'm sure you've reviewed my Bene Gesserit training. Ghanima admits it. I know Alia... did. You know the consequences of your difference."
He peered upward at her with disturbing intensity. "Almost, we did not take this tack with you," he said, and there was a sense of her own fatigue in his voice. "We know the fluttering of your lips as your lover knew them. Any bedchamber endearment your Duke whispered is ours to recall at will. You've accepted this intellectually, no doubt. But I warn you that intellectual acceptance is not enough. If any of us becomes Abomination - it could be you within us who creates it! Or my father... or mother! Your Duke! Any one of you could possess us - and the condition would be the same."
Jessica felt a burning in her chest, dampness in her eyes. "Leto... " she managed, allowing herself to use his name at last. She found the pain less than she'd imagined it would be, forced herself to continue. "What is it you want of me?"
"I would teach my grandmother."
"Teach me what?"
"Last night, Ghani and I played the mother-father roles almost to our destruction, but we learned much. There are things one can know, given an awareness of conditions. Actions can be predicted. Alia, now - it's well nigh certainty that she's plotting to abduct you."
Jessica blinked, shocked by the swift accusation. She knew this trick well, had employed it many times: set a person up along one line of reasoning, then introduce the shocker from another line. She recovered with a sharp intake of breath.
"I know what Alia has been doing... what she is, but..."
"Grandmother, pity her. Use your heart as well as your intelligence. You've done that before. You pose a threat, and Alia wants the Imperium for her own - at least, the thing she has become wants this."
"How do I know this isn't another Abomination speaking?"
He shrugged. "That's where your heart comes in. Ghani and I know how she fell. It isn't easy to adjust to the clamor of that inner multitude. Suppress their egos and they will come crowding back every time you invoke a memory. One day -" He swallowed in a dry throat. "- a strong one from that inner pack decides it's time to share the flesh."
"And there's nothing you can do?" She asked the question although she feared the answer.
"We believe there is something... yes. We cannot succumb to the spice; that's paramount. And we must not suppress the past entirely. We must use it, make an amalgam of it. Finally we will mix them all into ourselves. We will, no longer be our original selves - but we will not be possessed."
"You speak of a plot to abduct me."
"It's obvious. Wensicia is ambitious for her son. Alia is ambitious for herself, and..."
"Alia and Farad'n?"
"That's not indicated," he said. "But Alia and Wensicia run parallel courses right now. Wensicia has a sister in Alia's house. What simpler thing than a message to -"
"You know of such a message?"
"As though I'd seen it and read its every word."
"But you've not seen such a message?"
"No need. I have only to know that the Atreides are all here together on Arrakis. All of the water in one cistern." He gestured to encompass the planet.