Dune (Page 151)

"Tell me again about the waters of thy birthworld, Usul," she said.

He saw that she was trying to distract him, ease his mind of tensions before the deadly test. It was growing lighter, and he noted that some of his Fedaykin were already striking their tents.

"I’d rather you told me about the sietch and about our son," he said. "Does our Leto yet hold my mother in his palm?"

"It’s Alia he holds as well," she said. "And he grows rapidly. He’ll be a big man."

"What’s it like in the south?" he asked.

"When you ride the maker you’ll see for yourself," she said.

"But I wish to see it first through your eyes."

"It’s powerfully lonely," she said.

He touched the nezhoni scarf at her forehead where it protruded from her stillsuit cap. "Why will you not talk about the sietch?"

"I have talked about it. The sietch is a lonely place without our men. It’s a place of work. We labor in the factories and the potting rooms. There are weapons to be made, poles to plant that we may forecast the weather, spice to collect for the bribes. There are dunes to be planted to make them grow and to anchor them. There are fabrics and rugs to make, fuel cells to charge. There are children to train that the tribe’s strength may never be lost."

"Is nothing then pleasant in the sietch?" he asked.

"The children are pleasant. We observe the rites. We have sufficient food. Sometimes one of us may come north to be with her man. Life must go on."

"My sister, Alia – is she accepted yet by the people?"

Chani turned toward him in the growing dawnlight. Her eyes bored into him. "It’s a thing to be discussed another time, beloved."

"Let us discuss it now."

"You should conserve your energies for the test," she said.

He saw that he had touched something sensitive, hearing the withdrawal in her voice. "The unknown brings its own worries," he said.

Presently she nodded, said, "There is yet . . . misunderstanding because of Alia’s strangeness. The women are fearful because a child little more than an infant talks . . . of things that only an adult should know. They do not understand the . . . change in the womb that made Alia . . . different."

"There is trouble?" he asked. And he thought: I’ve seen visions of trouble over Alia .

Chani looked toward the growing line of the sunrise. "Some of the women banded to appeal to the Reverend Mother. They demanded she exorcise the demon in her daughter. They quoted the scripture: ‘Suffer not a witch to live among us.’ "

"And what did my mother say to them?"

"She recited the law and sent the women away abashed. She said: ‘If Alia incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not foreseeing and preventing the trouble.’ And she tried to explain how the change had worked on Alia in the womb. But the women were angry because they had been embarrassed. They went away muttering."

There will be trouble because of Alia , he thought.

A crystal blowing of sand touched the exposed portions of his face, bringing the scent of the pre-spice mass. "El Sayal, the rain of sand that brings the morning," he said.

He looked out across the gray light of the desert landscape, the landscape beyond pity, the sand that was form absorbed in itself. Dry lightning streaked a dark corner to the south – sign that a storm had built up its static charge there. The roll of thunder boomed long after.

"The voice that beautifies the land," Chani said.

More of his men were stirring out of their tents. Guards were coming in from the rims. Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders.

"Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him . . . once . . . long ago. "Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject."

The Fremen knew this rule instinctively.

The troop’s watermaster began the morning chanty, adding to it now the call for the rite to initiate a sandrider.

"The world is a carcass," the man chanted, his voice wailing across the dunes. "Who can turn away the Angel of Death? What Shai-hulud has decreed must be."

Paul listened, recognizing that these were the words that also began the death chant of his Fedaykin, the words the death commandos recited as they buried themselves into battle.

Will there be a rock shrine here this day to mark the passing of another soul? Paul asked himself. Will Fremen stop here in the future, each to add another stone and think on Muad’Dib who died in this place?

He knew this was among the alternatives today, a fact along lines of the future radiating from this position in time-space. The imperfect vision plagued him. The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of the jihad, the greater the turmoil that wove through his prescience. His entire future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm – the violent nexus beyond which all was fog and clouds.

"Stilgar approaches," Chani said. "I must stand apart now, beloved. Now, I must be Sayyadina and observe the rite that it may be reported truly in the Chronicles." She looked up at him and, for a moment, her reserve slipped, then she had herself under control. "When this is past, I shall prepare thy breakfast with my own hands," she said. She turned away.

Stilgar moved toward him across the flour sand, stirring up little dust puddles. The dark niches of his eyes remained steady on Paul with their untamed stare. The glimpse of black beard above the stillsuit mask, the lines of craggy cheeks, could have been wind-etched from the native rock for all their movement.

The man carried Paul’s banner on its staff – the green and black banner with a water tube in the staff – that already was a legend in the land. Half pridefully, Paul thought: I cannot do the simplest thing without its becoming a legend. They will mark how I parted from Chani, how I greet Stilgar – every move I make this day. Live or die, it is a legend. I must not die. Then it will be only legend and nothing to stop the jihad .