Dune (Page 135)

Harah stamped a foot, shook her shoulders with anger. "But I’m young!"

Stilgar looked at Paul, said: "Caution’s a worthy trait in a man who’d lead."

"But I’m young!" Harah repeated.

"Be silent," Stilgar commanded. "If a thing has merit, it’ll be. Show Usul to his quarters and see he has fresh clothing and a place to rest."

"Oh-h-h-h!" she said.

Paul had registered enough of her to have a first approximation. He felt the impatience of the troop, knew many things were being delayed here. He wondered if he dared ask the whereabouts of his mother and Chani, saw from Stilgar’s nervous stance that it would be a mistake.

He faced Harah, pitched his voice with tone and tremolo to accent her fear and awe, said: "Show me my quarters, Harah! We will discuss your youth another time."

She backed away two steps, cast a frightened glance at Stilgar. "He has the weirding voice," she husked.

"Stilgar," Paul said. "Chani’s father put heavy obligation on me. If there’s anything . . . "

"It’ll be decided in council," Stilgar said. "You can speak then." He nodded in dismissal, turned away with the rest of the troop following him.

Paul took Harah’s arm, noting how cool her flesh seemed, feeling her tremble. "I’ll not harm you, Harah," he said. "Show me our quarters." And he smoothed his voice with relaxants.

"You’ll not cast me out when the year’s gone?" she said. "I know for true I’m not as young as once I was."

"As long as I live you’ll have a place with me," he said. He released her arm. "Come now, where are our quarters?"

She turned, led the way down the passage, turning right into a wide cross tunnel lighted by evenly spaced yellow overhead globes. The stone floor was smooth, swept clean of sand.

Paul moved up beside her, studied the aquiline profile as they walked. "You do not hate me, Harah?"

"Why should I hate you?"

She nodded to a cluster of children who stared at them from the raised ledge of a side passage. Paul glimpsed adult shapes behind the children partly hidden by filmy hangings.

"I . . . bested Jamis."

"Stilgar said the ceremony was held and you’re a friend of Jamis." She glanced sidelong at him. "Stilgar said you gave moisture to the dead. Is that truth?"

"Yes."

"It’s more than I’ll do . . . can do."

"Don’t you mourn him?"

"In the time of mourning, I’ll mourn him."

They passed an arched opening. Paul looked through it at men and women working with stand-mounted machinery in a large, bright chamber. There seemed an extra tempo of urgency to them.

"What’re they doing in there?" Paul asked.

She glanced back as they passed beyond the arch, said: "They hurry to finish the quota in the plastics shop before we flee. We need many dew collectors for the planting."

"Flee?"

"Until the butchers stop hunting us or are driven from our land."

Paul caught himself in a stumble, sensing an arrested instant of time, remembering a fragment, a visual projection of prescience – but it was displaced, like a montage in motion. The bits of his prescient memory were not quite as he remembered them.

"The Sardaukar hunt us," he said.

"They’ll not find much excepting an empty sietch or two," she said. "And they’ll find their share of death in the sand."

"They’ll find this place?" he asked.

"Likely."

"Yet we take the time to . . . " He motioned with his head toward the arch now far behind them. " . . . make . . . dew collectors?"

"The planting goes on."

"What’re dew collectors?" he asked.

The glance she turned on him was full of surprise. "Don’t they teach you anything in the . . . wherever it is you come from?"

"Not about dew collectors."

"Hai!" she said, and there was a whole conversation in the one word.

"Well, what are they?"

"Each bush, each weed you see out there in the erg," she said, "how do you suppose it lives when we leave it? Each is planted most tenderly in its own little pit. The pits are filled with smooth ovals of chromoplastic. Light turns them white. You can see them glistening in the dawn if you look down from a high place. White reflects. But when Old Father Sun departs, the chromoplastic reverts to transparency in the dark. It cools with extreme rapidity. The surface condenses moisture out of the air. That moisture trickles down to keep our plants alive."

"Dew collectors," he muttered, enchanted by the simple beauty of such a scheme.

"I’ll mourn Jamis in the proper time for it," she said, as though her mind had not left his other question. "He was a good man, Jamis, but quick to anger. A good provider, Jamis, and a wonder with the children. He made no separation between Geoff’s boy, my firstborn, and his own true son. They were equal in his eyes." She turned a questing stare on Paul. "Would it be that way with you, Usul?"

"We don’t have that problem."

"But if – "

"Harah!"

She recoiled at the harsh edge in his voice.

They passed another brightly lighted room visible through an arch on their left. "What’s made there?" he asked.

"They repair the weaving machinery," she said. "But it must be dismantled by tonight." She gestured at a tunnel branching to their left. "Through there and beyond, that’s food processing and stillsuit maintenance." She looked at Paul. "Your suit looks new. But if it needs work, I’m good with suits. I work in the factory in season."