Dune

“Here’s one of them, m’Lord,” Gurney said. He signed to the guard to hold the captive five paces in front of Paul.

The Sardaukar’s eyes, Paul noted, carried a glazed expression of shock. A blue bruise stretched from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his mouth. He was of the blond, chisel-featured caste, the look that seemed synonymous with rank among the Sardaukar, yet there were no insignia on his torn uniform except the gold buttons with the Imperial crest and the tattered braid of his trousers.

“I think this one’s an officer, m’Lord,” Gurney said.

Paul nodded, said: “I am the Duke Paul Atreides. Do you understand that, man?”

The Sardaukar stared at him unmoving.

“Speak up,” Paul said, “or your Emperor may die.”

The man blinked, swallowed.

“Who am I?” Paul demanded.

“You are the Duke Paul Atreides,” the man husked.

He seemed too submissive to Paul, but then the Sardaukar had never been prepared for such happenings as this day. They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program.

“I have a message for you to carry to the Emperor,” Paul said. And he couched his words in the ancient formula: “I, a Duke of a Great House, an Imperial Kinsman, give my word of bond under the Convention. If the Emperor and his people lay down their arms and come to me here I will guard their lives with my own.” Paul held up his left hand with the ducal signet for the Sardaukar to see. “I swear it by this.”

The man wet his lips with his tongue, glanced at Gurney.

“Yes,” Paul said. “Who but an Atreides could command the allegiance of Gurney Halleck.”

“I will carry the message,” the Sardaukar said.

“Take him to our forward command post and send him in,” Paul said.

“Yes, m’Lord.” Gurney motioned for the guard to obey, led them out.

Paul turned back to Stilgar.

“Chani and your mother have arrived,” Stilgar said. “Chani has asked time to be alone with her grief. The Reverend Mother sought a moment in the weirding room; I know not why.”

“My mother’s sick with longing for a planet she may never see,” Paul said. “Where water falls from the sky and plants grow so thickly you cannot walk between them.”

“Water from the sky,” Stilgar whispered.

In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.

I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.

In a rush of loneliness, Paul glanced around the room, noting how proper and on-review his guards had become in his presence. He sensed the subtle, prideful competition among them—each hoping for notice from Muad’Dib.

Muad’Dib from whom all blessings flow, he thought, and it was the bitterest thought of his life. They sense that I must take the throne, he thought. But they cannot know I do it to prevent the jihad.

Stilgar cleared his throat, said: “Rabban, too, is dead.”

Paul nodded.

Guards to the right suddenly snapped aside, standing at attention to open an aisle for Jessica. She wore her black aba and walked with a hint of striding across sand, but Paul noted how this house had restored to her something of what she had once been here—concubine to a ruling duke. Her presence carried some of its old assertiveness.

Jessica stopped in front of Paul, looked down at him. She saw his fatigue and how he hid it, but found no compassion for him. It was as though she had been rendered incapable of any emotion for her son.

Jessica had entered the Great Hall wondering why the place refused to fit itself snugly in to her memories. It remained a foreign room, as though she had never walked here, never walked here with her beloved Leto, never confronted a drunken Duncan Idaho here—never, never, never….

There should be a word-tension directly opposite to adab, the demanding memory, she thought. There should be a word for memories that deny themselves.

“Where is Alia?” she asked.

“Out doing what any good Fremen child should be doing in such times,” Paul said. “She’s killing enemy wounded and marking their bodies for the water-recovery teams.”

“Paul!”

“You must understand that she does this out of kindness,” he said. “Isn’t it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty?”

Jessica glared at her son, shocked by the profound change in him. Was it his child’s death did this? she wondered. And she said: “The men tell strange stories of you, Paul. They say you’ve all the powers of the legend—nothing can be hidden from you, that you see where others cannot see.”