Dune

The questioning silence of the moment was broken by the sound of someone whistling as he walked down the outer hall. The whistling was stilled by a guardsman’s barked command as it came opposite the door.

“Korba, I think you may survive all this,” Paul said. And he read the growing light of understanding on Stilgar’s face.

“The strangers in the gardens, Sire?” Stilgar asked.

“Ahh, yes,” Paul said. “Have Bannerjee put them out, Stil. Korba will assist.”

“Me, Sire?” Korba betrayed deep disquiet.

“Some of my friends have forgotten they once were Fremen,” Paul said, speaking to Korba, but designing his words for Stilgar. “You will mark down the ones Chani identifies as Sardaukar and you will have them killed. Do it yourself. I want it done quietly and without undue disturbance. We must keep in mind that there’s more to religion and government than approving treaties and sermons.”

“I obey the orders of Muad’Dib,” Korba whispered.

“The Zabulon computations?” Stilgar asked.

“Tomorrow,” Paul said. “And when the strangers are removed from the gardens, announce that the reception is ended. The party’s over, Stil.”

“I understand, m’Lord.”

“I’m sure you do,” Paul said.

Here lies a toppled god—

His fall was not a small one.

We did but build his pedestal,

A narrow and a tall one.

—TLEILAXU EPIGRAM

Alia crouched, resting elbows on knees, chin on fists, stared at the body on the dune—a few bones and some tattered flesh that once had been a young woman. The hands, the head, most of the upper torso were gone—eaten by the coriolis wind. The sand all around bore the tracks of her brother’s medics and questors. They were gone now, all excepting the mortuary attendants who stood to one side with Hayt, the ghola, waiting for her to finish her mysterious perusal of what had been written here.

A wheat-colored sky enfolded the scene in the glaucous light common to midafternoon for these latitudes.

The body had been discovered several hours earlier by a low-flying courier whose instruments had detected a faint water trace where none should be. His call had brought the experts. And they had learned—what? That this had been a woman of about twenty years, Fremen, addicted to semuta . . . and she had died here in the crucible of the desert from the effects of a subtle poison of Tleilaxu origin.

To die in the desert was a common enough occurrence. But a Fremen addicted to semuta, this was such a rarity that Paul had sent her to examine the scene in the ways their mother had taught them.

Alia felt that she had accomplished nothing here except to cast her own aura of mystery about a scene that was already mysterious enough. She heard the ghola’s feet stir the sand, looked at him. His attention rested momentarily upon the escort ’thopters circling overhead like a flock of ravens.

Beware of the Guild bearing gifts, Alia thought.

The mortuary ’thopter and her own craft stood on the sand near a rock outcropping behind the ghola. Focusing on the grounded ’thopters filled Alia with a craving to be airborne and away from here.

But Paul had thought she might see something here which others would miss. She squirmed in her stillsuit. It felt raspingly unfamiliar after all the suitless months of city life. She studied the ghola, wondering if he might know something important about this peculiar death. A lock of his black-goat hair, she saw, had escaped his stillsuit hood. She sensed her hand longing to tuck that hair back into place.

As though lured by this thought, his gleaming gray metal eyes turned toward her. The eyes set her trembling and she tore her gaze away from him.

A Fremen woman had died here from a poison called “the throat of hell.”

A Fremen addicted to semuta.

She shared Paul’s disquiet at this conjunction.

The mortuary attendants waited patiently. This corpse contained not enough water for them to salvage. They felt no need to hurry. And they’d believe that Alia, through some glyptic art, was reading a strange truth in these remains.

No strange truth came to her.

There was only a distant feeling of anger deep within her at the obvious thoughts in the attendants’ minds. It was a product of the damned religious mystery. She and her brother could not be people. They had to be something more. The Bene Gesserit had seen to that by manipulating Atreides ancestry. Their mother had contributed to it by thrusting them onto the path of witchery.

And Paul perpetuated the difference.

The Reverend Mothers encapsulated in Alia’s memories stirred restlessly, provoking adab flashes of thought: “Peace, Little One! You are what you are. There are compensations.”

Compensations!

She summoned the ghola with a gesture.

He stopped beside her, attentive, patient.

“What do you see in this?” she asked.

“We may never learn who it was died here,” he said. “The head, the teeth are gone. The hands . . . Unlikely such a one had a genetic record somewhere to which her cells could be matched.”