Dune Page 4

  "Is there more to this dream?" Jessica prompted.

  "Yes. But maybe she was calling me Usul," Paul said. "I just thought of that." Again, he closed his eyes. "She asks me to tell her about the waters. And I take her hand. And I say I'll tell her a poem. And I tell her the poem, but I have to explain some of the words--like beach and surf and seaweed and seagulls."

  "What poem?" the Reverend Mother asked.

  Paul opened his eyes. "It's just one of Gurney Halleck's tone poems for sad times."

  Behind Paul, Jessica began to recite: "I remember salt smoke from a beach fire

  And shadows under the pines--

  Solid, clean ... fixed--

  Seagulls perched at the tip of land,

  White upon green ...

  And a wind comes through the pines

  To sway the shadows;

  The seagulls spread their wings,

  Lift

  And fill the sky with screeches.

  And I hear the wind

  Blowing across our beach,

  And the surf,

  And I see that our fire

  Has scorched the seaweed."

  "That's the one," Paul said.

  The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."

  She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.

  Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you; that I'll grant."

  "May I go now?" he asked.

  "Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.

  "She said those who tried for it died."

  "But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.

  She talks of hints, Paul thought. She doesn't really know anything. And he said: "Hint then."

  "And be damned to me?" She smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.' "

  He felt astonishment: she was talking about such elementary things as tension within meaning. Did she think his mother had taught him nothing at all?

  "That's a hint?" he asked.

  "We're not here to bandy words or quibble over their meaning," the old woman said. "The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows--a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose."

  Paul stared at her. She said purpose and he felt the word buffet him, reinfecting him with terrible purpose. He experienced a sudden anger at her: fatuous old witch with her mouth full of platitudes.

  "You think I could be this Kwisatz Haderach," he said. "You talk about me, but you haven't said one thing about what we can do to help my father. I've heard you talking to my mother. You talk as though my father were dead. Well, he isn't!"

  "If there were a thing to be done for him, we'd have done it," the old woman growled. "We may be able to salvage you. Doubtful, but possible. But for your father, nothing. When you've learned to accept that as a fact, you've learned a real Bene Gesserit lesson."

  Paul saw how the words shook his mother. He glared at the old woman. How could she say such a thing about his father? What made her so sure? His mind seethed with resentment.

  The Reverend Mother looked at Jessica. "You've been training him in the Way--I've seen the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules."

  Jessica nodded.

  "Now, I caution you," said the old woman, "to ignore the regular order of training. His own safety requires the Voice. He already has a good start in it, but we both know how much more he needs ... and that desperately." She stepped close to Paul, stared down at him. "Goodbye, young human. I hope you make it. But if you don't--well, we shall yet succeed."

  Once more she looked at Jessica. A flicker sign of understanding passed between them. Then the old woman swept from the room, her robes hissing, with not another backward glance. The room and its occupants already were shut from her thoughts.

  But Jessica had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother's face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day.

  You h ave read that Muad'Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The dangers were too great. But Muad'Dib did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Gurney Halleck, the trou-badour-warrior. You will sing some of Gurney's songs as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old Mentat Master of Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah Emperor. There were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and--ofcourse--theDuke Leto, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.

  --from"A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

  THUFIR HAWAT slipped into the training room of Castle Caladan, closed the door softly. He stood there a moment, feeling old and tired and storm-leathered. His left leg ached where it had been slashed once in the service of the Old Duke.

  Three generations of them now, he thought.

  He stared across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through the skylights, saw the boy seated with back to the door, intent on papers and charts spread across an ell table.

  How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door? Hawat cleared his throat.

  Paul remained bent over his studies.

  A cloud shadow passed over the skylights. Again, Hawat cleared his throat.

  Paul straightened, spoke without turning: "I know. I'm sitting with my back to a door."

  Hawat suppressed a smile, strode across the room.

  Paul looked up at the grizzled old man who stopped at a corner of the table. Hawat's eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.

  "I heard you coming down the hall," Paul said. "And I heard you open the door."

  "The sounds I make could be imitated."

  "I'd know the difference."

  He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-mother of his is giving him the deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that? Maybe that's why they sent the old Proctor here--towhip our dear Lady Jessica into line.

  Hawat pulled up a chair across from Paul, sat down facing the door. He did it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck him as an odd place suddenly, a stranger-place with most of its hardware already gone off to Arrakis. A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.

  There stand I, Hawat thought.

  "Thufir, what're you thinking?" Paul asked.

  Hawat looked at the boy. "I was thinking we'll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again."

  "Does that make you sad?"

  "Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place." He glanced at the charts on the table. "And Arrakis is just another place."

  "Did my father send you up to test me?"

  Hawat scowled--the boy had such observing ways about him. He nodded. "You're thinking it'd have been nicer if he'd come up himself, but you must know how busy he is. He'll be along later."

  "I've been studying about the storms on Arrakis."

  "The storms. I see."

  "They sound pretty bad."

  "That's too cautious a word: bad. Those storms build up across six or seven thousand kilometers of flatlands, feed on anything that can give them a push--coriolis force, other storms, anything that has an ounce of energy in it. They can blow up to seven hundred kilometers an hour, loaded with everything loose that's in their way--sand, dust, everythi
ng. They can eat flesh off bones and etch the bones to slivers."

  "Why don't they have weather control?"

  "Arrakis has special problems, costs are higher, and there'd be maintenance and the like. The Guild wants a dreadful high price for satellite control and your father's House isn't one of the big rich ones, lad. You know that."

  "Have you ever seen the Fremen?"

  The lad's mind is darting all over today, Hawat thought.

  "Like as not I have seen them," he said. "There's little to tell them from the folk of the graben and sink. They all wear those great flowing robes. And they stink to heaven in any closed space. It's from those suits they wear--call them 'stulsuits'--that reclaim the body's own water."

  Paul swallowed, suddenly aware of the moisture in his mouth, remembering a dream of thirst. That people could want so for water they had to recycle their body moisture struck him with a feeling of desolation. "Water's precious there," he said.

  Hawat nodded, thinking: Perhaps I'm doing it, getting across to him the importance of this planet as an enemy. It's madness to go in there without that caution in our minds.

  Paul looked up at the skylight, aware that it had begun to rain. He saw the spreading wetness on the gray meta-glass. "Water," he said.

  "You'll learn a great concern for water," Hawat said. "As the Duke's son you'll never want for it, but you'll see the pressures of thirst all around you."

  Paul wet his lips with his tongue, thinking back to the day a week ago and the ordeal with the Reverend Mother. She, too, had said something about water starvation.

  "You'll learn about the funeral plains," she'd said, "about the wilderness that is empty, the wasteland where nothing lives except the spice and the sandworms. You'll stain your eyepits to reduce the sun glare. Shelter will mean a hollow out of the wind and hidden from view. You'll ride upon your own two feet without 'thopter or groundcar or mount."

  And Paul had been caught more by her tone--singsong and wavering--than by her words.

  "When you live upon Arrakis," she had said, "khala, the land is empty. The moons will be your friends, the sun your enemy."

  Paul had sensed his mother come up beside him away from her post guarding the door. She had looked at the Reverend Mother and asked: "Do you see no hope, Your Reverence?"

  "Not for the father." And the old woman had waved Jessica to silence, looked down at Paul. "Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things...." She held up four big-knuckled fingers. "... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing...." She closed her fingers into a fist. "... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!"

  A week had passed since that day with the Reverend Mother. Her words were only now beginning to come into full register. Now, sitting in the training room with Thufir Hawat, Paul felt a sharp pang of fear. He looked across at the Mentat's puzzled frown.

  "Where were you woolgathering that time?" Hawat asked.

  "Did you meet the Reverend Mother?"

  "That Truthsayer witch from the Imperium?" Hawat's eyes quickened with interest. "I met her."

  "She...." Paul hesitated, found that he couldn't tell Hawat about the ordeal. The inhibitions went deep.

  "Yes? What did she?"

  Paul took two deep breaths. "She said a thing." He closed his eyes, calling up the words, and when he spoke his voice unconsciously took on some of the old woman's tone: " 'You, Paul Atreides, descendant of kings, son of a Duke, you must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.' " Paul opened his eyes, said: "That made me angry and I said my father rules an entire planet. And she said, 'He's losing it.' And I said my father was getting a richer planet. And she said. 'He'll lose that one, too.' And I wanted to run and warn my father, but she said he'd already been warned--by you, by Mother, by many people."

  "True enough," Hawat muttered.

  "Then why're we going?" Paul demanded.

  "Because the Emperor ordered it. And because there's hope in spite of what that witch-spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?"

  Paul looked down at his right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. Slowly, he willed the muscles to relax. She put some kind of hold on me, he thought. How?

  "She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do."

  She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue.

  "She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men."

  "How'd she figure your father attracted men like Duncan and Gurney?" Hawat asked.

  Paul shrugged. "Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world's language, that it's different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn't speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn't it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don't hear just with your ears. And I said that's what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life."

  Hawat chuckled. "How'd that sit with her?"

  "I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: 'A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.' That seemed to satisfy her."

  He seems to be getting over it, Hawat thought, but that old witch frightened him. Why did she do it?

  "Thufir," Paul said, "will Arrakis be as bad as she said?"

  "Nothing could be that bad," Hawat said and forced a smile. "Take those Fremen, for example, the renegade people of the desert. By first-approximation analysis, I can tell you there're many, many more of them than the Imperium suspects. People live there, lad: a great many people, and...." Hawat put a sinewy finger beside his eye. "... they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion. You must not breathe a word of this, lad. I tell you only as your father's helper."

  "My father has told me of Salusa Secundus," Paul said. "Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Arrakis ... perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it."

  "We do not really know of Salusa Secundus today," Hawat said. "Only what it was like long ago ... mostly. But what is known--you're right on that score."

  "Will the Fremen help us?"

  "It's a possibility." Hawat stood up. "I leave today for Arrakis. Meanwhile, you take care of yourself for an old man who's fond of you, heh? Come around here like the good lad and sit facing the door. It's not that I think there's any danger in the castle; it's just a habit I want you to form."

  Paul got to his feet, moved around the table. "You're going today?"

  "Today it is, and you'll be following tomorrow. Next time we meet it'll be on the soil of your new world." He gripped Paul's right arm at the bicep. "Keep your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge." He released the arm, patted Paul's shoulder, whirled and strode quickly to the door.

  "Thufir!" Paul called.

  Hawat turned, standing in the open doorway.

  "Don't sit with your back to any doors," Paul said.

  A grin spread across the seamed old face. "That I won't, lad. Depend on it." And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.

  Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We're leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things--the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns--the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?

  The door across from Paul banged open and an ugly lump of a man lurched through it preceded by a handful of weapons.

  "Well, Gurney Halleck," Paul c
alled, "are you the new weapons master?"

  Halleck kicked the door shut with one heel. "You'd rather I came to play games, I know," he said. He glanced around the room, noting that Hawat's men already had been over it, checking, making it safe for a duke's heir. The subtle code signs were all around.

  Paul watched the rolling, ugly man set himself back in motion, veer toward the training table with the load of weapons, saw the nine-string baliset slung over Gurney's shoulder with the multipick woven through the strings near the head of the fingerboard.

  Halleck dropped the weapons on the exercise table, lined them up--the rapiers, the bodkins, the kindjals, the slow-pellet stunners, the shield belts. The inkvine scar along his jawline writhed as he turned, casting a smile across the room.

  "So you don't even have a good morning for me, you young imp," Halleck said. "And what barb did you sink in old Hawat? He passed me in the hall like a man running to his enemy's funeral."

  Paul grinned. Of all his father's men, he liked Gurney Halleck best, knew the man's moods and deviltry, his humors, and thought of him more as a friend than as a hired sword.

  Halleck swung the baliset off his shoulder, began tuning it. "If y' won't talk, y' won't," he said.

  Paul stood, advanced across the room, calling out: "Well, Gurney, do we come prepared for music when it's fighting time?"

  "So it's sass for our elders today," Halleck said. He tried a chord on the instrument, nodded.

  "Where's Duncan Idaho?" Paul asked. "Isn't he supposed to be teaching me weaponry?"

  "Duncan's gone to lead the second wave onto Arrakis," Halleck said. "All you have left is poor Gurney who's fresh out of fight and spoiling for music." He struck another chord, listened to it, smiled.

  "And it was decided in council that you being such a poor fighter we'd best teach you the music trade so's you won't waste your life entire."

  "Maybe you'd better sing me a lay then," Paul said. "I want to be sure how not to do it."

  "Ah-h-h, hah!" Gurney laughed, and he swung into "Galacian Girls," his multipick a blur over the strings as he sang: "Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls