Dune

Paul strained at memories, tried to recall the sound of Chani breathing beside him in the night. Where is there comfort? he wondered. All he could remember was Chani at breakfast the day they’d left for the desert. She’d been restless, irritable.

“Why do you wear that old jacket?” she’d demanded, eyeing the black uniform coat with its red hawk crest beneath his Fremen robes. “You’re an Emperor!”

“Even an Emperor has his favorite clothing,” he’d said.

For no reason he could explain, this had brought real tears to Chani’s eyes—the second time in her life when Fremen inhibitions had been shattered.

Now, in the darkness, Paul rubbed his own cheeks, felt moisture there. Who gives moisture to the dead? he wondered. It was his own face, yet not his. The wind chilled the wet skin. A frail dream formed, broke. What was this swelling in his breast? Was it something he’d eaten? How bitter and plaintive was this other self, giving moisture to the dead. The wind bristled with sand. The skin, dry now, was his own. But whose was the quivering which remained?

They heard the wailing then, far away in the sietch depths. It grew louder . . . louder . . .

The ghola whirled at a sudden glare of light, someone flinging wide the entrance seals. In the light, he saw a man with a raffish grin—no! Not a grin, but a grimace of grief! It was a Fedaykin lieutenant named Tandis. Behind him came a press of many people, all fallen silent now that they saw Muad’Dib.

“Chani . . .” Tandis said.

“Is dead,” Paul whispered. “I heard her call.”

He turned toward the sietch. He knew this place. It was a place where he could not hide. His onrushing vision illuminated the entire Fremen mob. He saw Tandis, felt the Fedaykin’s grief, the fear and anger.

“She is gone,” Paul said.

The ghola heard the words out of a blazing corona. They burned his chest, his backbone, the sockets of his metal eyes. He felt his right hand move toward the knife at his belt. His own thinking became strange, disjointed. He was a puppet held fast by strings reaching down from that awful corona. He moved to another’s commands, to another’s desires. The strings jerked his arms, his legs, his jaw. Sounds came squeezing out of his mouth, a terrifying repetitive noise—

“Hraak! Hraak! Hraak!”

The knife came up to strike. In that instant, he grabbed his own voice, shaped rasping words: “Run! Young master, run!”

“We will not run,” Paul said. “We’ll move with dignity. We’ll do what must be done.”

The ghola’s muscles locked. He shuddered, swayed.

“...what must be done!” The words rolled in his mind like a great fish surfacing. “...what must be done!” Ahhh, that had sounded like the old Duke, Paul’s grandfather. The young master had some of the old man in him. “...what must be done!”

The words began to unfold in the ghola’s consciousness. A sensation of living two lives simultaneously spread out through his awareness: Hayt / Idaho / Hayt / Idaho . . . He became a motionless chain of relative existence, singular, alone. Old memories flooded his mind. He marked them, adjusted them to new understandings, made a beginning at the integration of a new awareness. A new persona achieved a temporary form of internal tyranny. The masculating synthesis remained charged with potential disorder, but events pressed him to the temporary adjustment. The young master needed him.

It was done then. He knew himself as Duncan Idaho, remembering everything of Hayt as though it had been stored secretly in him and ignited by a flaming catalyst. The corona dissolved. He shed the Tleilaxu compulsions.

“Stay close to me, Duncan,” Paul said. “I’ll need to depend on you for many things.” And, as Idaho continued to stand entranced: “Duncan!”

“Yes, I am Duncan.”

“Of course you are! This was the moment when you came back. We’ll go inside now.”

Idaho fell into step beside Paul. It was like the old times, yet not like them. Now that he stood free of the Tleilaxu, he could appreciate what they had given him. Zensunni training permitted him to overcome the shock of events. The mentat accomplishment formed a counterbalance. He put off all fear, standing above the source. His entire consciousness looked outward from a position of infinite wonder: he had been dead; he was alive.

“Sire,” the Fedaykin Tandis said as they approached him, “the woman, Lichna, says she must see you. I told her to wait.”

“Thank you,” Paul said. “The birth . . .”

“I spoke to the medics,” Tandis said, falling into step. “They said you have two children, both of them alive and sound.”

“Two?” Paul stumbled, caught himself on Idaho’s arm.

“A boy and a girl,” Tandis said. “I saw them. They’re good Fremen babies.”

“How . . . how did she die?” Paul whispered.

“M’Lord?” Tandis bent close.

“Chani?” Paul said.

“It was the birth, m’Lord,” Tandis husked. “They said her body was drained by the speed of it. I don’t understand, but that is what they said.”