Yesterday had been given over to religion. Today it was politics. The walls of the imperial council chamber were covered with sheets of highly polished gold reflecting multiple distorted images of the nine people gathered around the gigantic chrysoberyl table. Mother sat at its foot, facing towards the doors to the balcony of appearances. She wore the full vestments of a high priestess of the Faith; orange and cinnamon robes encrusted with gold, a turban of the same materials covering her hair with a gold gauze veil dangling from one corner. It seemed to me an uncharacteristic choice. And her fingers played restlessly with a stylus, a mannerism I had never seen in her before.
Stilgar, the Minister of State, sat at her right hand. His leathery face had been blasted by the endless sands and seamed by the unforgiving sun and his blue-in-blue eyes looked black, deep set under his massive brow. At Mother's other hand was the newly appointed representative of the Qizarate, Javid, a young man of repellant good looks, surly and water fat. I looked from him to Stilgar; from the Fremen past to its future and was dismayed. What have we done to our people?
I looked at my father next to Stilgar. Paul was on his other side, like a smaller copy, both in the pose of mnemonic impressment; eyes closed hands pressed to foreheads, recording the proceedings for later analysis. Leto was at the opposite end of the table, slumped in his chair so only his forehead and bush of red hair showed above the polished surface. Ghanima sat at his left hand, next to Paul, spine straight and lips pursed in disapproval. Leto can be such a brat! My place was at his right with Aunt Irulan between me and the repellant Javid.
"Second, even third time pilgrims are becoming common," he was saying in his curiously antiquated accent, and I wondered idly what isolated pocket of the People had vomited him up. "The Qizarate suggests such piety be recognized by some small token, a Bakka scarf perhaps?."
Stilgar glared, outraged. The green gauze scarf of the Weeper was the distinguishing sign of Seitch Tabr.
Leto raised himself slightly, eyes and mouth appearing above the table edge. "Better we discourage such exercises in religious wanderlust!"
"My Lord!" the shock in Javid's usually oily voice was false but the distress genuine. "Would your Sacred Enlightenment deny the Faithful the right to seek Muad'Dib?"
"Is not Muad'Dib to be found everywhere?" I asked and was rewarded by a glare from Javid, quickly covered as he remembered who I was..
Leto straightened more, chin becoming visible. "Exactly right, Cousin! Our Father is everywhere. Let the Faithful find Him in their own hearts rather then indulge in these exercises in homelessness!"
"The Hajj is profitable to the priests," Ghani murmured with a sly, sidelong look down the table.
Stilgar snorted. "My grandnephew and foster son speaks aright," he said, underlining his privileged standing as kin to the Holy Family. "Dune does not need these water-fat, water wasting passage-birds!"
Javid, rendered speechless, threw an appealing look at Mother. She rapped her stylus on the table. "Enough!" she glared at Leto. "We did not create the Hajj nor is it within our power to end it."
"It is dangerous to meddle with popular passions," Irulan put in hesitantly. "Surely it is better that we be the focus of their aspirations?"
"Is it?" Leto wondered.
"I said enough!" Mother snapped, looked at Stilgar. "Is there anything else?"
Stil drew another folder from his pile, gingerly between finger and thumb, distaste twisting his mouth. "The Bene Gesserit wish to consult with the throne regarding the continuation of the Atreides bloodline."
Leto gave a sharp bark of laughter and slid back down in his seat. I shared an eye roll with Ghani. The Bene Gesserit never change, incorrigible in their futile efforts to control the uncontrollable.
Paul opened his eyes and lowered his hands, shifting from recorder to participant. "Surely the Sisterhood is a little early in its concern," he said, an adult dryness in his light child's voice.
"Between four and five standard years too early," I agreed as dryly.
"You may tell the Sisterhood we consider the union of the two branches of House Atreides politically expedient," said Mother.
"The very mating the Sisterhood desires," Irulan observed.
"Which is as good a reason as I can think of for looking elsewhere," said Leto straightening abruptly and adding to me, "No offense, Sweet Coz."
"None taken," I answered. "There is no lack of interesting alternatives; the Corrino Prince, little Elissa Fenring, Lirno son of Alir -" Stilgar looked at me startled by the name of his grandson. I smiled at him. "Fremen are good strong stock, culled by Shai-Hulud Himself. We could do worse then reinforce those genes."
"Breed back to norm," Paul murmured.
Ghani nodded agreement. "Our progeny would thank us for it."
"What norm?" asked Leto.
The stylus was trembling in Mother's hand, did she want an Atreides/Atreides cross so much? "I thought you content with the plans made." her voice held forced calm.
"We are not discontented," Leto assured her. "We but explore our options."
"Tell the Sisterhood the Atreides heirs mean to breed and are considering possible partners," Ghani suggested.
I chuckled. "That'll worry them!"
"A good thing," said Irulan, old resentments vibrato in her voice. Poor Irulan! she had the best of all reasons to hate the Sisterhood. She'd been shaped even before her conception as a tool for their use. Her love for her father had been the first crack in her conditioning and her love for Paul Atreides had shattered it but the Bene Gesserit had ruined both relationships. Knowing her a tool both father and husband had distrusted her, been reluctant to take all she would have given. The Sisterhood had robbed Irulan of love - and for that she would never forgive them.
"Love is antithetical to the Bene Gesserit Way," Ghani said gently, showing her thoughts had paralleled mine. "But Love is the only truly creative force therefore the Sisterhood remains forever sterile though they are blind to the fact."
"Don't be sentimental, niece," said Mother.
Ghani, Irulan and I all looked at her in shock. How could she say such a thing? Surely she too must know the truth of Love? A spasm of pain passed over Father's face and Leto's eyes narrowed. I realized with increased urgency that something was indeed very wrong with my mother.
The Ixian tube-car decanted the four of us and our inevitable train of priests into the guard room outside the Royal Creche. Fremen in the red djellebas of the Fedaykin Death Commandos lined the walls, hands on the hilts of their crysknives, green scarves marking them as Stilgar's own. We left the priests in an uncomfortable clump beside the tube and crossed the black and sand colored floor to the tunnel-like entrance to the Creche proper. The four meter thick plas-steel door screwed itself into place behind us sealing us off from the rest of the universe.
Our attendants, six desert worn Fremen crones sat in the anteroom. Every one was the widow or mother of a Fedaykin killed in personal defense of Muad'Dib and fiercely proud of her green mourning robes and the Atreides badge hanging around her neck. Shagarat and Hadeed sat together, sewing strips of green and black spice cloth into hangings. Azma busied herself brushing the whale fur cover of a sitting cushion. Sahsahra was grinding something in a small mortar, and Tawabil plucked the strings of a baliset to the irregular beat of Fakiha's desert drum. All six looked up briefly, saw we required no service and returned to their activities, a welcome change from the smothering sycophancy of the morning audience.
Leto led the way into the salon, shedding his golden robe at the threshold then stripping off orange vest and trousers to pad barefoot in nothing but his loincloth past the golden fountain bubbling on the terrace and down into the garden.
"Good idea," said Ghani. And she pulled her own gown over her head, untied the fastenings of her shift and stepped out of its filmy puddle as it dropped to the floor. Paul and I did not hesitate to follow suit. A splash announced Leto's entry into the pool at the bottom of the garden and stripped of our royal trappings we ran to join him.
The garden of the Royal Creche rose in green and flowering terraces from its central jewel a long pool, almost a lake, of clear water in a bed of pearl. A fountain at one end sent water arcing high in deliberate imitation of an original on distant Caladan. A summerhouse stood at the other end, a secretive green cave overgrown with sweet scented jasmine. Leto puffed and blew like a whale in the water, scattering floating lilies and ornamental fish. Ghani and Paul dived in after him. I preferred to sit on the edge kicking my feet and returning the others' splashes.
Ghani climbed out dripping and touched my arm. "Catch me if you can!" She darted off and I followed; up and down steps, dodging through a plantation of slender saplings, pushing through thickets of shrubs and trampling flowers underfoot. Ghani turned into the dappled shade of the long trellised walk. I pursued, closing the distance and catching the back of her loincloth just as we reached the terrace steps. We collapsed together in a giggling heap.
"And sometimes," said Aunt Irulan's voice above us, "they are children like other children."
We disentangled ourselves and looked up. Irulan stood at the top of the terrace steps still dressed in the black aba she'd worn at the audience. A wide belt of golden links cinched the full robe at the waist and an Atreides hawk wrought of fire gems glistened on her brow, suspended from a narrow filet. Beside her was a small man of indeterminate age.
White hair capped a round, unlined face open and innocent as a child's but the small dark eyes, keen and deep set, gave such ingenuousness the lie. It, like his foppish dress of short mauve robe and pink pleated shirt, was part of a carefully constructed facade. He stood close to Irulan, revealing an old intimacy. A lover perhaps? She had been past thirty when she married Uncle Paul. Never bred of course but not even the Bene Gesserit would have begrudged her a playmate or two.
"Who is this you've brought us, Irulan my sweet?" Paul asked as he and Leto came up the trellis path dripping. I saw the visitor start to sharp attention, recognizing the purely masculine confidence in Paul's voice, the undertones of sensual awareness incongruous with the childish flesh. "I warn you, sir," he added, "I am a jealous lover!"
Irulan laughed, but with an edge of uncertainty. Paul had been flirting with her since he was able to talk. At age five he had announced his intention to marry her when he was old enough. Neither Irulan nor anybody else knew how seriously to take that. Not even I. "This is Sil, Reeve Perrin," she said.
I recognized the name instantly. So this was the old Imperium's peripatetic poet-laureate! "You are very welcome," I told him eagerly, "I have read your books."
Leto snorted. "Is there a book in the Known Universe you haven't read, Sweet Coz?"
"I hope so," I shot back.
"Why do we stand here?" Ghani wondered. "Let us go up."
"Isa'af!" attend me! Leto shouted, leading the way into the airy salon decorated in shades of shell and sand.
The outer door opened and Fakiha looked in briefly then disappeared. It reopen a moment later admitting Hadeed, Tawabil, Azma and Shagarat bearing towels and clothing. Lips pursed in unspoken disapproval of the flagrant waste of moisture they toweled us briskly, replaced soaked loincloths with soft robes and wound wet hair with colored wraps. Within minutes we were dry and dressed and installed side by side upon a silk covered divan facing our guests. Fakiha came in carrying a coffee service; fat, fluted silver pot, small blue porcelain cups, a yellow bowl of fine ground coffee beans, glass flasks of melange and cardomon, all neatly arranged on a platinum tray which she placed on the low table in front of Irulan. It was Uncle Paul's coffee service, during his life it had been his Fremen mate, Chani, who'd made use of it - and worn his water rings. Only now, with her death and Uncle's did Irulan finally come into her rights as wife. Wife to a ghost.
I watched Sil, Reeve Perrin watch Irulan make the coffee, her movements deft and practiced as she measured the powdered bean and added carefully calculated amounts of spice and Spice. I saw the Corrino princess he remembered mirrored in his face. I too remembered her; the creamy complexion of the rounded oval face, the full lips with their arrogant pout, the long, heavy lidded green eyes. Dune and Muad'Dib had extinguished that Irulan. Today she was a wiry, water thin Fremen Sayyadina, tanned by the desert sun with hollowed cheeks and temples emphasizing the long blue-in-blue Eyes of the Ibad with their faint sandtracks at the corners. The sleek rolls and deceptively casual tendrils of a Kaitain court hairstyle did not become this new Irulan. She would have done better to leave her long blond hair in the ringed braids she usually wore and confronted her old friend with a wholly new self rather then this painful reminder of once was.
"So the great chronicler of the great finally deigns to visit Our court," Leto challenged lazily.
Sil tore his eyes away from Irulan. "Say rather he finally dares to do so," he answered lightly.
"Arrakis is not a safe place for disbelievers," Paul questioned/agreed.
"A seeker who is not yet sure of what he has found," Sil corrected. "A distinction perhaps too fine for your Qizarate to appreciate."
"Not Our Qizarate!" Ghanima said emphatically.
Irulan checked the coffee - not yet ready - and replaced the lid. "The religious bureaucracy is our Sardaukar, the base on which our rule rests."
"Did House Corrino never fear or resent their Sarduakar?" Leto asked her.
She smiled wryly. "All the time."
"The Qizarate worships power, not Muad'Dib," I said bleakly.
"They are not easily governed," Irulan agreed. She checked the coffee again and poured a cup, handing it to Fakiha, standing behind her, to pass to Sil. "But Alia keeps them well in hand."
That of course was part of the problem.
Fakiha brought coffee to Leto and Ghanima, Paul and me. Irulan poured the cup for the Fallen then filled one for herself.
"So how do you find Our city, Poet?" Leto asked Sil.
"Disturbing, Highness," he frowned into the cinnamon colored depths of his spice coffee. "I thought it fitting on my first morning in Arrakeen to go to the early service at the Temple."
We all winced. We knew the kind of crowds that gathered before Mother's Temple; the religious exhibitionists, the idle wanting to be entertained, Pilgrims seeking who knew what, sellers of relics and tarot packs, charlatans playing at soothsaying, food vendors shrieking their wares, mummers and acrobats, beggars and thieves. A mass of humanity both sacred and profane. But which was which? So we'd often asked ourselves. And so must Sil, with his artist's sensitivities, have wondered - but he denied it:
"I have seen carnivals of all kinds, the one held in your Temple square could not shock me." Carnival, a good word for it. "But there was an old man who did, one of your deep desert Fremen by the look of him. He silenced the cacophony with a single word - such control! He called the worshippers blasphemers and idolaters." Sil closed his eyes, his flexible voice changed, taking on a rough, commanding edge. "He said; 'The religion of Muad'Dib is not Muad'dib! He spurns it as he spurns you! Sand will cover this place! Sand with cover you!"
We stared at him, all four of us and Irulan too, wide eyed. Shivers coursed through my body. Who was this man who said what we, Muad'Dib's heirs, so often felt?
"I thought to see him torn apart before my eyes," Sil continued. "But the crowd parted tamely to let him and his guide pass."
"Guide?" Leto asked sharply.
Sil nodded. "A young boy who led him. The old man was blind, eye sockets scoured empty by I know not what."
"A stoneburner," Irulan whispered, hands white knuckled around her cup.
"Perhaps," Sil said, studying her reaction then turning to survey the four of us. "That thought occurred also to one in the crowd. He called the name of Muad'Dib and the old man stopped. He took a thing from within his robes, a desiccated fist the knuckle bones showing white. He called it the Hand of God and claimed to speak for the Hand of God. He named himself the Preacher."
There was silence as eye spoke to eye. Then Irulan said tightly. "Paul is dead. He must be dead. He went into the desert."
"The Hand of God," Leto murmured, "our father's hand?"
"There were many Fremen blinded by stoneburners during the Jihad," Paul said practically.
"But if it is Uncle Paul -" I did not finish the thought. Each of us did that for him or her self.
