Frank Herbert - Children of Dune

“Tell me, Paul,” Halleck said. “Does your mother know?”

The Preacher sighed. “To the Sisterhood, all achieved harmony simply by accepting it.

“Tell me, Paul,” Halleck said. “Does your mother know?”

The Preacher sighed. “To the Sisterhood, all of it, I am dead. Do not try to revive me.”

Still not looking at him, Halleck asked: “But why does she—”

“She does what she must. She makes her own life, thinking she rules many lives. Thus we all play god.”

“But you’re alive,” Halleck whispered, overcome now by his realization, turning at last to stare at this man, younger than himself, but so aged by the desert that he appeared to carry twice Halleck’s years.

“What is that?” Paul demanded. “Alive?”

Halleck peered around them at the watching Fremen, their faces caught between doubt and awe.

“My mother never had to learn my lesson.” It was Paul’s voice! “To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There’d be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”

“But you’re alive!” Halleck spoke louder now.

Paul ignored the excitement in his old companion’s voice, asked: “Would you really have pitted this lad against his sister in the test-Mashhad? What deadly nonsense! Each would have said: ‘No! Kill me! Let the other live!’ Where would such a test lead? What is it then to be alive, Gurney?”

“That was not the test,” Halleck protested. He did not like the way the Fremen pressed closer around them, studying Paul, ignoring Leto.

But Leto intruded now. “Look at the fabric, father.”

“Yes … yes …” Paul held his head high as though sniffing the air. “It’s Farad’n, then!”

“How easy it is to follow our thoughts instead of our senses,” Leto said.

Halleck had been unable to follow this thought and, about to ask, was interrupted by Leto’s hand upon his arm. “Don’t ask, Gurney. You might return to suspecting that I’m Abomination. No! Let it happen, Gurney. If you try to force it, you’ll only destroy yourself.”

But Halleck felt himself overcome by doubts. Jessica had warned him. “They can be very beguiling, these pre-born. They have tricks you’ve never even dreamed.” Halleck shook his head slowly. And Paul! Gods below! Paul alive and in league with this question mark he’d fathered!

The Fremen around them could no longer be held back. They pressed between Halleck and Paul, between Leto and Paul, shoving the two to the background. The air was showered with hoarse questions. “Are you Muab’Dib? Are you truly Muad’Dib? Is it true, what he says? Tell us!”

“You must think of me only as The Preacher,” Paul said, pushing against them. “I cannot be Paul Atreides or Muad’Dib, never again. I’m not Chani’s mate or Emperor.”

Halleck, fearing what might happen if these frustrated questions found no logical answer, was about to act when Leto moved ahead of him. It was there Halleck first saw an element of the terrible change which had been wrought in Leto. A bull voice roared, “Stand aside!”—and Leto moved forward, thrusting adult Fremen right and left, knocking them down, clubbing them with his hands, wrenching knives from their hands by grasping the blades.

In less than a minute those Fremen still standing were pressed back against the walls in silent consternation. Leto stood beside his father. “When Shai-Hulud speaks, you obey,” Leto said.

And when a few of the Fremen had started to argue, Leto had torn a corner of rock from the passage wall beside the room’s exit and crumbled it in his bare hands, smiling all the while.

“I will tear your sietch down around your faces,” he said.

“The Desert Demon,” someone whispered.

“And your qanats,” Leto agreed. “I will rip them apart. We have not been here, do you hear me?”

Heads shook from side to side in terrified submission.

“No one here has seen us,” Leto said. “One whisper from you and I will return to drive you into the desert without water.”

Halleck saw hands being raised in the warding gesture, the sign of the worm.

“We will go now, my father and I, accompanied by our old friend,” Leto said. “Make our ’thopter ready.”

And Leto had guided them to Shuloch then, explaining en route that they must move swiftly because “Farad’n will be here on Arrakis very soon. And, as my father has said, then you’ll see the real test, Gurney.”

Looking down from the Shuloch butte, Halleck asked himself once more, as he asked every day: “What test? What does he mean?”

But Leto was no longer in Shuloch, and Paul refused to answer.

Ghanima sat far back outside the circle of light from the spice lamps and watched this Buer Agarves. She didn’t like his round face and agitated eyebrows, his way of moving his feet when he spoke, as though his words were a hidden music to which he danced.

He’s not here to parley with Stil, Ghanima told herself, seeing this confirmed in every word and movement from this man. She moved farther back away from the Council circle.

Every sietch had a room such as this one, but the meeting hall of the abandoned djedida struck Ghanima as a cramped place because it was so low. Sixty people from Stilgar’s band plus the nine who’d come with Agarves filled only one end of the hall. Spice-oil lamps reflected against low beams which supported the ceiling. The light cast wavering shadows which danced on the walls, and the pungent smoke filled the place with the smell of cinnamon.

The meeting had started at dusk after the moisture prayers and evening meal. It had been going on for more than an hour now, and Ghanima couldn’t fathom the hidden currents in Agarves’s performance. His words appeared clear enough, but his motions and eye movements didn’t agree.

Agarves was speaking now, responding to a question from one of Stilgar’s lieutenants, a niece of Harah’s named Rajia. She was a darkly ascetic young woman whose mouth turned down at the corners, giving her an air of perpetual distrust. Ghanima found the expression satisfying in the circumstances.

“Certainly I believe Alia will grant a full and complete pardon to all of you,” Agarves said. “I’d not be here with this message otherwise.”

Stilgar intervened as Rajia made to speak once more. “I’m not so much worried about our trusting her as I am about whether she trusts you.” Stilgar’s voice carried growling undertones. He was uncomfortable with this suggestion that he return to his old status.

“It doesn’t matter whether she trusts me,” Agarves said. “To be candid about it, I don’t believe she does. I’ve been too long searching for you without finding you. But I’ve always felt she didn’t really want you captured. She was—”

“She was the wife of the man I slew,” Stilgar said. “I grant you that he asked for it. Might just as well’ve fallen on his own knife. But this new attitude smells of—”

Agarves danced to his feet, anger plain on his face. “She forgives you! How many times must I say it? She had the Priests make a great show of asking divine guidance from—”