Dune

Paul felt that the barren walls accused him with their fresh gypsum wash. The threadbare condition of the two remaining hangings amplified the sense of guilt.

A narrow shelf occupied the wall on his right. It held a row of portraits—mostly bearded Fremen, some in stillsuits with their catchtubes dangling, some in Imperial uniforms posed against exotic offworld backgrounds. The most common scene was a seascape.

The Fremen on cushions cleared his throat, forcing Paul to look at him. It was Otheym precisely as the vision had revealed him: neck grown scrawny, a bird thing which appeared too weak to support the large head. The face was a lopsided ruin—networks of crisscrossed scars on the left cheek below a drooping, wet eye, but clear skin on the other side and a straight, blue-in-blue Fremen gaze. A long kedge of a nose bisected the face.

Otheym’s cushion sat in the center of a threadbare rug, brown with maroon and gold threads. The cushion fabric betrayed splotches of wear and patching, but every bit of metal around the seated figure shone from polishing—the portrait frames, shelf lip and brackets, the pedestal of a low table on the right.

Paul nodded to the clear half of Otheym’s face, said: “Good luck to you and your dwelling place.” It was the greeting of an old friend and sietch mate.

“So I see you once more, Usul.”

The voice speaking his tribal name whined with an old man’s quavering. The dull drooping eye on the ruined side of the face moved above the parchment skin and scars. Gray bristles stubbled that side and the jawline there hung with scabrous peelings. Otheym’s mouth twisted as he spoke, the gap exposing silvery metal teeth.

“Muad’Dib always answers the call of a Fedaykin,” Paul said.

The woman in the doorway shadows moved, said: “So Stilgar boasts.”

She came forward into the light, an older version of the Lichna which the Face Dancer had copied. Paul recalled then that Otheym had married sisters. Her hair was gray, nose grown witch-sharp. Weavers’ calluses ran along her forefingers and thumbs. A Fremen woman would’ve displayed such marks proudly in the sietch days, but she saw his attention on her hands, hid them under a fold of her pale blue robe.

Paul remembered her name then—Dhuri. The shock was he remembered her as a child, not as she’d been in his vision of these moments. It was the whine that edged her voice, Paul told himself. She’d whined even as a child.

“You see me here,” Paul said. “Would I be here if Stilgar hadn’t approved?” He turned toward Otheym. “I carry your water burden, Otheym. Command me.”

This was the straight Fremen talk of sietch brothers.

Otheym produced a shaky nod, almost too much for that thin neck. He lifted a liver-marked left hand, pointed to the ruin of his face. “I caught the splitting disease on Tarahell, Usul,” he wheezed. “Right after the victory when we’d all . . .” A fit of coughing stopped his voice.

“The tribe will collect his water soon,” Dhuri said. She crossed to Otheym, propped pillows behind him, held his shoulder to steady him until the coughing passed. She wasn’t really very old, Paul saw, but a look of lost hopes ringed her mouth, bitterness lay in her eyes.

“I’ll summon doctors,” Paul said.

Dhuri turned, hand on hip. “We’ve had medical men, as good as any you could summon.” She sent an involuntary glance to the barren wall on her left.

And the medical men were costly, Paul thought.

He felt edgy, constrained by the vision but aware that minor differences had crept in. How could he exploit the differences? Time came out of its skein with subtle changes, but the background fabric held oppressive sameness. He knew with terrifying certainty that if he tried to break out of the enclosing pattern here, it’d become a thing of terrible violence. The power in this deceptively gentle flow of Time oppressed him.

“Say what you want of me,” he growled.

“Couldn’t it be that Otheym needed a friend to stand by him in this time?” Dhuri asked. “Does a Fedaykin have to consign his flesh to strangers?”

We shared Sietch Tabr, Paul reminded himself. She has the right to berate me for apparent callousness.

“What I can do I will do,” Paul said.

Another fit of coughing shook Otheym. When it had passed, he gasped: “There’s treachery, Usul. Fremen plot against you.” His mouth worked then without sound. Spittle escaped his lips. Dhuri wiped his mouth with a corner of her robe, and Paul saw how her face betrayed anger at such waste of moisture.

Frustrated rage threatened to overwhelm Paul then. That Otheym should be spent thus! A Fedaykin deserved better. But no choice remained—not for a Death Commando or his Emperor. They walked occam’s razor in this room. The slightest misstep multiplied horrors—not just for themselves, but for all humankind, even for those who would destroy them.