Children of Dune (Page 59)

"I forbid it!"

Jessica merely shrugged.

"We have a brave Fedaykin here," Alia said, motioning toward al-Fali. "This argument can wait."

"It can wait forever," Jessica said, speaking in Chakobsa, her words double-barbed to tell Alia that no argument would stop the death command.

"We shall see!" Alia said. She turned to al-Fali. "Why are you here, Ghadhean al-Fali?"

"To see the mother of Muad’Dib," the Naib said. "What is left of the Fedaykin, that band of brothers who served her son, pooled their poor resources to buy my way in here past the avaricious guardians who shield the Atreides from the realities of Arrakis."

Alia said: "Anything the Fedaykin require, they have only -"

"He came to see me," Jessica interrupted. "What is your desperate need, Fedaykin?"

Alia said: "I speak for the Atreides here! What is -"

"Be silent, you murderous Abomination!" Jessica snapped. "You tried to have me killed, daughter! I say it for all here to know. You can’t have everyone in this hall killed to silence them – as that Priest was silenced. Yes, the Naib’s blow would’ve killed the man, but he could’ve been saved. He could’ve been questioned! You have no concern that he was silenced. Spray your protests upon us as you will, your guilt is written in your actions!"

Alia sat in frozen silence, face pale. And Jessica, watching the play of emotions across her daughter’s face, saw a terrifyingly familiar movement of Alia’s hands, an unconscious response which once had identified a deadly enemy of the Atreides. Alia’s fingers moved in a tapping rhythm – little finger twice, index finger three times, ring finger twice, little finger once, ring finger twice… and back through the tapping in the same order.

The old Baron!

The focus of Jessica’s eyes caught Alia’s attention and she glanced down at her hand, held it still, looked back at her mother to see the terrible recognition. A gloating smile locked Alia’s mouth.

"So you have your revenge upon us," Jessica whispered.

"Have you gone mad, mother?" Alia asked.

"I wish I had," Jessica said. And she thought: She knows I will confirm this to the Sisterhood. She knows. She may even suspect I’ll tell the Fremen and force her into a Trial of Possession. She cannot let me leave here alive.

"Our brave Fedaykin waits while we argue," Alia said.

Jessica forced her attention back to the old Naib. She brought her responses under control, said: "You came to see me, Ghadhean."

"Yes, My Lady. We of the desert see terrible things happening. The Little Makers come out of the sand as was foretold in the oldest prophecies. Shai-Hulud no longer can be found except in the deeps of the Empty Quarter. We have abandoned our friend, the desert!"

Jessica glanced at Alia, who merely motioned for Jessica to continue. Jessica looked out over the throng in the Chamber, saw the shocked alertness on every face. The import of the fight between mother and daughter had not been lost on this throng, and they must wonder why the audience continued. She returned her attention to al-Fali.

"Ghadhean, what is this talk of Little Makers and the scarcity of sandworms?"

"Mother of Moisture," he said, using her old Fremen title, "we were warned of this in the Kitab al-Ibar. We beseech thee. Let it not be forgotten that on the day Muad’Dib died, Arrakis turned by itself! We cannot abandon the desert."

"Hah!" Alia sneered. "The superstitious riffraff of the Inner Desert fear the ecological transformation. They -"

"I hear you, Ghadhean," Jessica said. "If the worms go, the spice goes. If the spice goes, what coin do we have to buy our way?"

Sounds of surprise: gasps and startled whispers could be heard spreading across the Great Hall. The Chamber echoed to the sound.

Alia shrugged. "Superstitious nonsense!"

Al-Fali lifted his right hand to point at Alia. "I speak to the Mother of Moisture, not to the Coan-Teen!"

Alia’s hands gripped the arms of her throne, but she remained seated.

Al-Fali looked at Jessica. "Once it was the land where nothing grew. Now there are plants. They spread like lice upon a wound. There have been clouds and rain along the belt of Dune! Rain, My Lady! Oh, precious mother of Muad’Dib, as sleep is death’s brother, so is rain on the Belt of Dune. It is the death of us all."

"We do only what Liet-Kynes and Muad’Dib himself designed for us to do," Alia protested. "What is all of this superstitious gabble? We revere the words of Liet-Kynes, who told us: ‘I wish to see this entire planet caught up in a net of green plants.’ So it will be."

"And what of the worms and the spice?" Jessica asked.

"There’ll always be some desert," Alia said. "The worms will survive."

She’s lying, Jessica thought. Why does she lie?

"Help us, Mother of Moisture," al-Fali pleaded.

With an abrupt sensation of double vision, Jessica felt her awareness lurch, propelled by the old Naib’s words. It was the unmistakable adab, the demanding memory which came upon one of itself. It came without qualifications and held her senses immobile while the lesson of the past was impressed upon her awareness. She was caught up in it completely, a fish in the net. Yet she felt the demand of it as a human-most moment, each small part a reminder of creation. Every element of the lesson-memory was real but insubstantial in its constant change, and she knew this was the closest she might ever come to experiencing the prescient dietgrasp which had inflicted itself upon her son.

Alia lied because she was possessed by one who would destroy the Atreides. She was, in herself, the first destruction. Then al-Fali spoke the truth: the sandworms are doomed unless the course of the ecological transformation is modified.