Dune Messiah dc-2 Page 6

  Farok turned slowly, stared into Scytale’s eyes. “The universe is unfinished, you know,” he said.

  This one is garrulous, but deep, Scytale thought. And he said: “I can see it made a profound impression on you.”

  “You are a Tleilaxu,” Farok said. “You have seen many seas. I have seen only this one, yet I know a thing about seas which you do not.”

  Scytale found himself in the grip of an odd feeling of disquiet.

  “The Mother of Chaos was born in a sea,” Farok said. “A Qizara Tafwid stood nearby when I came dripping from that water. He had not entered the sea. He stood on the sand … it was wet sand … with some of my men who shared his fear. He watched me with eyes that knew I had learned something which was denied to him. I had become a sea creature and I frightened him. The sea healed me of the Jihad and I think he saw this.”

  Scytale realized that somewhere in this recital the music had stopped. He found it disturbing that he could not place the instant when the baliset had fallen silent.

  As though it were relevant to what he’d been recounting, Farok said: “Every gate is guarded. There’s no way into the Emperor’s fortress.”

  “That’s its weakness,” Scytale said.

  Farok stretched his neck upward, peering.

  “There’s a way in,” Scytale explained. “The fact that most men—including, we may hope, the Emperor—believe otherwise … that’s to our advantage.” He rubbed his lips, feeling the strangeness of the visage he’d chosen. The musician’s silence bothered him. Did it mean Farok’s son was through transmitting? That had been the way of it, naturally: The message condensed and transmitted within the music. It had been impressed upon Scytale’s own neural system, there to be triggered at the proper moment by the distrans embedded in his adrenal cortex. If it was ended, he had become a container of unknown words. He was a vessel sloshing with data: every cell of the conspiracy here on Arrakis, every name, every contact phrase—all the vital information.

  With this information, they could brave Arrakis, capture a sandworm, begin the culture of melange somewhere beyond Muad’dib’s writ. They could break the monopoly as they broke Muad’dib. They could do many things with this information.

  “We have the woman here,” Farok said. “Do you wish to see her now?”

  “I’ve seen her,” Scytale said. “I’ve studied her with care. Where is she?”

  Farok snapped his fingers.

  The youth took up his rebec, drew the bow across it. Semuta music wailed from the strings. As though drawn by the sound, a young woman in a blue robe emerged from a doorway behind the musician. Narcotic dullness filled her eyes which were the total blue of the Ibad. She was a Fremen, addicted to the spice, and now caught by an offworld vice. Her awareness lay deep within the semuta, lost somewhere and riding the ecstasy of the music.

  “Otheym’s daughter,” Farok said. “My son gave her the narcotic in the hope of winning a woman of the People for himself despite his blindness. As you can see, his victory is empty. Semuta has taken what he hoped to gain.”

  “Her father doesn’t know?” Scytale asked.

  “She doesn’t even know,” Farok said. “My son supplies false memories with which she accounts to herself for her visits. She thinks herself in love with him. This is what her family believes. They are outraged because he is not a complete man, but they won’t interfere, of course.”

  The music trailed away to silence.

  At a gesture from the musician, the young woman seated herself beside him, bent close to listen as he murmured to her.

  “What will you do with her?” Farok asked.

  Once more, Scytale studied the courtyard. “Who else is in this house?” he asked.

  “We are all here now,” Farok said. “You’ve not told me what you’ll do with the woman. It is my son who wishes to know.”

  As though about to answer, Scytale extended his right arm. From the sleeve of his robe, a glistening needle darted, embedded itself in Farok’s neck. There was no outcry, no change of posture. Farok would be dead in a minute, but he sat unmoving, frozen by the dart’s poison.

  Slowly, Scytale climbed to his feet, crossed to the blind musician. The youth was still murmuring to the young woman when the dart whipped into him.

  Scytale took the young woman’s arm, urged her gently to her feet, shifted his own appearance before she looked at him. She came erect, focused on him.

  “What is it, Farok?” she asked.

  “My son is tired and must rest,” Scytale said. “Come. We’ll go out the back way.”

  “We had such a nice talk,” she said. “I think I’ve convinced him to get Tleilaxu eyes. It’d make a man of him again.”

  “Haven’t I said it many times?” Scytale asked, urging her into a rear chamber.

  His voice, he noted with pride, matched his features precisely. It unmistakably was the voice of the old Fremen, who certainly was dead by this time.

  Scytale sighed. It had been done with sympathy, he told himself, and the victims certainly had known their peril. Now, the young woman would have to be given her chance.

  ***

  Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

  —WORDS OF MUAD’DIB BY PRINCESS IRULAN

  It was going to be a bad session, this meeting of the Imperial Council, Alia realized. She sensed contention gathering force, storing up energy—the way Irulan refused to look at Chani, Stilgar’s nervous shuffling of papers, the scowls Paul directed at Korba the Qizara.

  She seated herself at the end of the golden council table so she could look out the balcony windows at the dusty light of the afternoon.

  Korba, interrupted by her entrance, went on with something he’d been saying to Paul. “What I mean, m’Lord, is that there aren’t as many gods as once there were.”

  Alia laughed, throwing her head back. The movement dropped the black hood of her aba robe. Her features lay exposed—blue-in-blue “spice eyes,” her mother’s oval face beneath a cap of bronze hair, small nose, mouth wide and generous.

  Korba’s cheeks went almost the color of his orange robe. He glared at Alia, an angry gnome, bald and fuming.

  “Do you know what’s being said about your brother?” he demanded.

  “I know what’s being said about your Qizarate,” Alia countered. “You’re not divines, you’re god’s spies.”

  Korba glanced at Paul for support, said: “We are sent by the writ of Muad’dib, that He shall know the truth of His people and they shall know the truth of Him.”

  “Spies,” Alia said.

  Korba pursed his lips in injured silence.

  Paul looked at his sister, wondering why she provoked Korba. Abruptly, he saw that Alia had passed into womanhood, beautiful with the first blazing innocence of youth. He found himself surprised that he hadn’t noticed it until this moment. She was fifteen—almost sixteen, a Reverend Mother without motherhood, virgin priestess, object of fearful veneration for the superstitious masses—Alia of the Knife.

  “This is not the time or place for your sister’s levity,” Irulan said.

  Paul ignored her, nodded to Korba. “The square’s full of pilgrims. Go out and lead their prayer.”

  “But they expect you, m’Lord,” Korba said.

  “Put on your turban,” Paul said. “They’ll never know at this distance.”

  Irulan smothered irritation at being ignored, watched Korba arise to obey. She’d had the sudden disquieting thought that Edric might not hide her actions from Alia. What do we really know of the sister? she wondered.

  Chani, hands tightly clasped in her lap, glanced across the table at Stilgar, her uncle, Paul’s Minister of State. Did the old Fremen Naib ever long for the simpler life of his desert sietch? she wondered. Stilgar’s black hair, she noted, had begun to gray at the edges, but his eyes beneath heavy brows remained far-seeing. It was the eagle stare of th
e wild, and his beard still carried the catchtube indentation of life in a stillsuit.

  Made nervous by Chani’s attention, Stilgar looked around the Council Chamber. His gaze fell on the balcony window and Korba standing outside. Korba raised outstretched arms for the benediction and a trick of the afternoon sun cast a red halo onto the window behind him. For a moment, Stilgar saw the Court Qizara as a figure crucified on a fiery wheel. Korba lowered his arms, destroyed the illusion, but Stilgar remained shaken by it. His thoughts went in angry frustration to the fawning supplicants waiting in the Audience Hall, and to the hateful pomp which surrounded Muad’dib’s throne.

  Convening with the Emperor, one hoped for a fault in him, to find mistakes, Stilgar thought. He felt this might be sacrilege, but wanted it anyway.

  Distant crowd murmuring entered the chamber as Korba returned. The balcony door thumped into its seals behind him, shutting off the sound.

  Paul’s gaze followed the Qizara. Korba took his seat at Paul’s left, dark features composed, eyes glazed by fanaticism. He’d enjoyed that moment of religious power.

  “The spirit presence has been invoked,” he said.

  “Thank the lord for that,” Alia said.

  Korba’s lips went white.

  Again, Paul studied his sister, wondered at her motives. Her innocence masked deception, he told himself. She’d come out of the same Bene Gesserit breeding program as he had. What had the kwisatz haderach genetics produced in her? There was always that mysterious difference: she’d been an embryo in the womb when her mother had survived the raw melange poison. Mother and unborn daughter had become Reverend Mothers simultaneously. But simultaneity didn’t carry identity.

  Of the experience, Alia said that in one terrifying instant she had awakened to consciousness, her memory absorbing the uncounted other-lives which her mother was assimilating.

  “I became my mother and all the others,” she said. “I was unformed, unborn, but I became an old woman then and there.”

  Sensing his thoughts on her, Alia smiled at Paul. His expression softened. How could anyone react to Korba with other than cynical humor? he asked himself. What is more ridiculous than a Death Commando transformed into a priest?

  Stilgar tapped his papers. “If my liege permits,” he said. “These are matters urgent and dire.”

  “The Tupile Treaty?” Paul asked.

  “The Guild maintains that we must sign this treaty without knowing the precise location of the Tupile Entente,” Stilgar said. “They’ve some support from Landsraad delegates.”

  “What pressures have you brought to bear?” Irulan asked.

  “Those pressures which my Emperor has designated for this enterprise,” Stilgar said. The stiff formality of his reply contained all his disapproval of the Princess Consort.

  “My Lord and husband,” Irulan said, turning to Paul, forcing him to acknowledge her.

  Emphasizing the titular difference in front of Chani, Paul thought, is a weakness. In such moments, he shared Stilgar’s dislike for Irulan, but sympathy tempered his emotions. What was Irulan but a Bene Gesserit pawn?

  “Yes?” Paul said.

  Irulan stared at him. “If you withheld their melange …”

  Chani shook her head in dissent.

  “We tread with caution,” Paul said. “Tupile remains the place of sanctuary for defeated Great Houses. It symbolizes a last resort, a final place of safety for all our subjects. Exposing the sanctuary makes it vulnerable.”

  “If they can hide people they can hide other things,” Stilgar rumbled. “An army, perhaps, or the beginnings of melange culture which—”

  “You don’t back people into a corner,” Alia said. “Not if you want them to remain peaceful.” Ruefully, she saw that she’d been drawn into the contention which she’d foreseen.

  “So we’ve spent ten years of negotiation for nothing,” Irulan said.

  “None of my brother’s actions is for nothing,” Alia said.

  Irulan picked up a scribe, gripped it with white-knuckled intensity. Paul saw her marshal emotional control in the Bene Gesserit way: the penetrating inward stare, deep breathing. He could almost hear her repeating the litany. Presently, she said: “What have we gained?”

  “We’ve kept the Guild off balance,” Chani said.

  “We want to avoid a showdown confrontation with our enemies,” Alia said. “We have no special desire to kill them. There’s enough butchery going on under the Atreides banner.”

  She feels it, too, Paul thought. Strange, what a sense of compelling responsibility they both felt for that brawling, idolatrous universe with its ecstasies of tranquility and wild motion. Must we protect them from themselves? he wondered. They play with nothingness every moment—empty lives, empty words. They ask too much of me. His throat felt tight and full. How many moments would he lose? What sons? What dreams? Was it worth the price his vision had revealed? Who would ask the living of some far distant future, who would say to them: “But for Muad’dib, you would not be here.”

  “Denying them their melange would solve nothing,” Chani said. “So the Guild’s navigators would lose their ability to see into timespace. Your Sisters of the Bene Gesserit would lose their truthsense. Some people might die before their time. Communication would break down. Who could be blamed?”

  “They wouldn’t let it come to that,” Irulan said.

  “Wouldn’t they?” Chani asked. “Why not? Who could blame the Guild? They’d be helpless, demonstrably so.”

  “We’ll sign the treaty as it stands,” Paul said.

  “M’Lord,” Stilgar said, concentrating on his hands, “there is a question in our minds.”

  “Yes?” Paul gave the old Fremen his full attention.

  “You have certain … powers,” Stilgar said. “Can you not locate the Entente despite the Guild?”

  Powers! Paul thought. Stilgar couldn’t just say: “You’re prescient. Can’t you trace a path in the future that leads to Tupile?”

  Paul looked at the golden surface of the table. Always the same problem: How could he express the limits of the inexpressible? Should he speak of fragmentation, the natural destiny of all power? How could someone who’d never experienced the spice change of prescience conceive an awareness containing no localized spacetime, no personal image-vector nor associated sensory captives?

  He looked at Alia, found her attention on Irulan. Alia sensed his movement, glanced at him, nodded toward Irulan. Ahhh, yes: any answer they gave would find its way into one of Irulan’s special reports to the Bene Gesserit. They never gave up seeking an answer to their kwisatz haderach.

  Stilgar, though, deserved an answer of some kind. For that matter, so did Irulan.

  “The uninitiated try to conceive of prescience as obeying a Natural Law,” Paul said. He steepled his hands in front of him. “But it’d be just as correct to say it’s heaven speaking to us, that being able to read the future is a harmonious act of man’s being. In other words, prediction is a natural consequence in the wave of the present. It wears the guise of nature, you see. But such powers cannot be used from an attitude that prestates aims and purposes. Does a chip caught in the wave say where it’s going? There’s no cause and effect in the oracle. Causes become occasions of convections and confluences, places where the currents meet. Accepting prescience, you fill your being with concepts repugnant to the intellect. Your intellectual consciousness, therefore, rejects them. In rejecting, intellect becomes a part of the processes, and is subjugated.”

  “You cannot do it?” Stilgar asked.

  “Were I to seek Tupile with prescience,” Paul said, speaking directly to Irulan, “this might hide Tupile.”

  “Chaos!” Irulan protested. “It has no … no … consistency.”

  “I did say it obeys no Natural Law,” Paul said.

  “Then there are limits to what you can see or do with your powers?” Irulan asked.

  Before Paul could answer, Alia said: “Dear Irulan, prescience has no limits. No
t consistent? Consistency isn’t a necessary aspect of the universe.”

  “But he said …”

  “How can my brother give you explicit information about the limits of something which has no limits? The boundaries escape the intellect.”

  That was a nasty thing for Alia to do, Paul thought. It would alarm Irulan, who had such a careful consciousness, so dependent upon values derived from precise limits. His gaze went to Korba, who sat in a pose of religious reverie—listening with the soul. How could the Qizarate use this exchange? More religious mystery? Something to evoke awe? No doubt.

  “Then you’ll sign the treaty in its present form?” Stilgar asked.

  Paul smiled. The issue of the oracle, by Stilgar’s judgment, had been closed. Stilgar aimed only at victory, not at discovering truth. Peace, justice and a sound coinage—these anchored Stilgar’s universe. He wanted something visible and real—a signature on a treaty.

  “I’ll sign it,” Paul said.

  Stilgar took up a fresh folder. “The latest communication from our field commanders in Sector Ixian speaks of agitation for a constitution.” The old Fremen glanced at Chani, who shrugged.

  Irulan, who had closed her eyes and put both hands to her forehead in mnemonic impressment, opened her eyes, studied Paul intently.

  “The Ixian Confederacy offers submission,” Stilgar said, “but their negotiators question the amount of the Imperial Tax which they—”

  “They want a legal limit to my Imperial will,” Paul said. “Who would govern me, the Landsraad or CHOAM?”

  Stilgar removed from the folder a note on instroy paper. “One of our agents sent this memorandum from a caucus of the CHOAM minority.” He read the cipher in a flat voice: “The Throne must be stopped in its attempt at a power monopoly. We must tell the truth about the Atreides, how he maneuvers behind the triple sham of Landsraad legislation, religious sanction and bureaucratic efficiency.” He pushed the note back into the folder.