Instua is a small, tidally-locked planet, with one side facing the star Yallie. On its surface, amid hot, sulfuric pools, bacteria swarm and turn the seas crimson and gold. The other side faces the cold galaxy. Below the surface, extremophiles thrive in deep geothermic vents. The thin circle in between, where the planet sees days and nights, is a series of patches at different latitudes. Fish that thrive in the equatorial microclimate cannot coexist with the ferns that live polewards, so each small band is its own self-enclosed system.
Instua is also the fiefdom of the minor Jelag house. It exports nothing of consequence, save ambitious, motivated servants of the empire, and imports nitrogen by the shipful to make an inhabitable climate on the dark side. From the Emperor's perspective, it is an unimportant backwater.
For Pardot Kynes, it is paradise. A perfect illustration of how life thrives by diversifying, extending into every niche on the planet. Here, in half a day's journey, is a spectrum of organisms, each bearing witness to how evolution lets them excel in their own domains. The species a hundred klicks away might as well be on Salusa Secundus. There is no need for test tubes or experimentation when home itself has arranged so vibrant a palette of habitats.
But he wants more. Not for himself, but for his daughter. Liet not only has every bit of his patience and keen eye, but also welcomes adversity, guiding a 'thopter over the torrid side just because she can. She could thrive, he knows, in one of the many centers of the interconnected galaxy.
The Imperial summons to Arrakis is intended as a fancy sinecure, a way to keep Pardot happy. Arrakis is important because of spice, but even if there had been any biodiversity there, little can thrive under the Harkonnen regime. Liet can keep busy counting grains of sand.
Instead, she remembers her father's lessons. Life is always changing, taking on new forms. And despite humans' best efforts to foresee and shape the future, chance still intervenes.
The Harkonnen base of operations is Carthag, so that's where Kynes first settles. The major life-form is humans, their circulation of spice and money and bacteria and recycled water forming systems as complex as any. But she can study humans anywhere, so she gradually prepares herself to journey beyond the city.
There is no shortage of technology on Arrakis. But most of it is designed to avoid the desert as much as possible, even for the people who labor there. Crawlers to extract the spice, carryalls to retrieve it, stillsuits to preserve the pyons. Asking laborers how to develop tolerance for the climate is like asking an Imperial how to get used to Sardaukar warfare or meta-cyanide. One does not seek it out; one prevents it, or dies trying.
In the meantime, she can study geology. The winds provide natural experiments and control groups as dunes are made and remade. Whatever melange means to the rest of the galaxy, the particles intermixed with the rest of Arrakis' dust don't alter the laws of friction or stability beyond their normal parameters.
She occasionally journeys out to the old botanical testing stations, but it's easy to see how even a diligent Imperial representative could let them fall into disrepair. The amount of water needed to sustain ongoing research is too costly.
It is no single incident, but rather the long-term work of inference and deduction, that makes it clear: if she wants to understand Arrakis, truly sense the planet beyond the scattered villages, she must go among the Fremen. More than that, rely upon the Fremen—her own stillsuit is worth little against the storms and worms. But how is she to convince them of her goodwill, of the necessity of them aiding each other? She is no sociologist, but she can guess what they will make of an off-worlder unable to survive on her own.
In the end, the answer is as simple as it is distasteful. Bribery. It is a solution she will come to rely on again.
Fremen's eyes make them easy to identify. All she has to do is carry a literjon with her when she visits crawlers, until she gets lucky enough to witness a guerilla attack. The weight is no burden; the wait, questioning whether it can be acceptable to use water as a hostage, is what lies heavily on her.
But the Fremen do come. She meets their blue-in-blue eyes and tells them that this is a gift, and there will be more like it if they help her get the stations operational. She is not prepared for their suspicion, even revulsion at the idea of accepting a gift from a stranger. What would she have done if an Imperial on Instua presented her with a thimbleful of spice, no questions asked? Check it for poison, probably.
They do send young people to help her with the stations. Later, she will realize that the Fremen saw her as a glorified babysitter, allowing her to distract teenagers too weak or fearful to ride worms and rash adults who might issue untimely challenges. She, with her fancies of green oases and blue rivers, belongs with the kooks.
As long as she has help, she doesn't care. Young children, too haphazard to be trusted with delicate instruments, are her most openminded students, listening to stories about predators and prey and chiming in with examples of hawks and rats. Their minds are still growing, and a word planted in the right ground might bear fruit in the distant future.
Or it might not. None of her pedagogy will matter if Arrakis itself is completely impervious to terraforming, and the fatalistic Fremen certainly believe this. Some of the pyons concede that one could invest immense quantities of time and water into remaking the planet, but who would do that when there was spice to harvest?
Still, between her assistants and students, she's able to get Botanical Testing Station #23 online. It holds samples of cacti, and the basic computer automatically records temperature, moisture, and windspeed data to make long-term graphs. Getting the graphs to output in any useful format requires human intervention, of course, so as to respect the prohibition against thinking machines, but it's a start. "Thank you," she says. "I am truly grateful for the gift of your labor. This is important work."
A Fremen woman gives her the "let's humor the off-worlder" eye roll.
"Could you help me with the station west of here? Or introduce me to someone who can?"
Blank faces, behind the bourka and stillsuit hood.
"Unless you think it would be easier beyond the Shield Wall, but—"
"We are Sietch Mokl," the woman interrupts. "West of here, they are Sietch Rikt. You would need to ask their naib the silly things you have asked of us."
"Do you have a chief? Someone who can speak to every sietch?" She's heard mention of a Council of Leaders, but that body appears to be a wartime exigency to make sure feuding sietches don't contaminate third parties' water.
The woman snorts. "The ways of your Emperor are not the ways of Arrakis. Every sietch has its own leader, and should they falter, another will rise in the challenge. Bi-lal kaifa."
The latter expression sometimes means amin, let it be so. Here, it means something like I thought even an Imperial like you had figured that much out.
"I see," says Kynes, then turns to her technicians. "You'll keep the station running?"
"Of course," says one of the younger boys.
"If anything breaks, radio me. If the radio breaks...you can ask the villages to call Dr. Kynes."
"Where are you going?" asks another young woman. "Not back to Carthag?"
"For a while, at first," Kynes says. "I have work to catch up on there. Then I'll go on to Sietch Rikt."
"You can't just expect to show up at Sietch Rikt!"
"Why not?" she asks. "Wouldn't they say the same about you, if I asked? Yet here I am."
They consider this while she tries to bite her tongue. I wouldn't have to if you helped me, if you learned to use radios instead of whatever scrap you salvage from crawlers, if your sietches worked together instead of killing each other for a few drops of urine. She is too proud to give up on all the questions that Arrakis poses, but that does not mean she has suddenly become fond of the planet or its people.
"You could send some of the technicians," she ventures. "Tell them I'm coming. They wouldn't have to stay."
"No," says the first woman, but two of the men—restless ones, near-combatants—exchange glances. It might be a good excuse to travel.
Ultimately, the men are talked down. Kynes journeys alone and tells Sietch Rikt that she had met Sietch Mokl and shared their water. It helps her make inroads slightly more quickly than she had the first time around, but it still feels like she's starting from the bottom again, like she's poured out a puddle of water only to watch it evaporate.
She does it again. And again. If her reputation precedes her, she isn't aware of it. Each time, she stays long enough to get the station running, teach children about ecology, ask a few questions about the sandworms. Each time, she assures the sietch that she is unarmed, is not part of House Harkonnen, and does not want spice. A few stations are completely abandoned, with no sietch in the vicinity, or perhaps none who want to waste time putting up with an off-worlder's ravings. Then again, nobody has tried to murder her for her water, so she can't complain.
It's at Two Birds—which is a strange name, because she doesn't see any birds—that Kynes is greeted with laughter. "You talk like an off-worlder," says a man named Wavoll, "but you have eyes of ibad."
"Ibad?" Kynes echoes. This is one of those names, like the Maker, that can vary greatly depending on who says it. Best not to assume, especially as a stranger.
"Blue-within-blue. Like ours. You aren't getting enough city food?"
"Maybe she's a Guild navigator," another man teases, "come to beg us for spice. We're not selling. You'll get your quota when the Harkonnen beast gives it to you."
"I'm a planetologist," says Kynes. "My job is to study Arrakis, and all its life. Hawks, cacti, Makers. In order for me to do that, I need to live in the sietches, and share your water and food."
"She's the one your brother talked about," the Fremen says to Wavoll. "The Emperor's pet scientist."
"Wavoll here is a fine teacher," says another. "He can show you his Little Maker."
Kynes ignores the jibe. "Once we get the radio up and running, you can talk to the other stations. They'll be able to tell you what they've found."
This interests the Fremen, mostly for the potential of being able to track massive dust storms by following them across the planet, and warning other sietches when they should take cover. Wavoll also proves to be a helpful assistant, more charismatic than many of the scholar-Fremen who have shown curiosity about her work. He can be slothful at times, but is always careful with the computers. And at meal times, he always makes sure Kynes has enough to drink.
"Ignore him," says another Fremen. "He only helps you because he thinks you're cute."
"Is that wrong?" asks Kynes.
Wavoll laughs. "I thought you Imperials were supposed to be above such concerns."
"No one can spend half a year on Arrakis without realizing how much bribery takes place—and keeps the wheels turning."
"And how long have you been here?"
"Five years," says Kynes. It comes out more bitterly than she'd meant it, and she adds, "I understand that I'm not Fremen. But I'm not Harkonnen, either. I just thought people might trust me more by now."
"Off-worlders come and go. You can share our shelter, even our water, but that's not the same as committing yourself to the planet."
Kynes blinks. "Is this about the crysknife?"
"Wavoll," his friend calls, "you should show her your crysknife. Once she's seen it, she'll never want to leave the planet again."
"Leave her alone," Wavoll snaps. He is sillier and more daring than his brother, a sober warrior who will probably become a naib someday, but in that moment the resemblance is clear.
To Kynes, he says, "Not specifically. Just that it's safer for us not to rely on others. Even if they mean well, they don't last."
"That's no way to live. Is nothing permanent?"
"Kanly," says Wavoll. "And Shai-hulud."
The Fremen religion is another factor Kynes has had to contend with. To some extent, it's only to be expected. On an inhospitable planet, faith in a better future, in this life or the next, is as common as wind. If some prophecies are garblings of O.C. scriptures, and others mystical obscurantism regarding things like snow or dew that would be mundane on another planet, well, a lot can be lost in translation over thousands of years. What unnerves Kynes is what it means for her. Does she have to accept the Fremen faith in order to truly belong in the sietch? Dare she pay lip service to it while disdaining the believers, or are they sharp enough to see through such patronizing attitudes? If she cannot freely choose, does it matter?
She makes no attempt to memorize the rituals, but a prayer heard often enough becomes second nature. May His passage cleanse the world.
What do the Fremen seek? They are surrounded by danger and think little of it. They live on top of the most sought-after commodity in the galaxy, and scorn imperial wealth. They despise the Harkonnens, but even the House Major has only ruled here for a few decades. If it is liberation they desire, it is not the kind that can be won by a sword and lost again.
And what does she seek? Life set free to thrive in every corner. A planet doused with water, baptized and reborn to be a flourishing world. The sandworms cannot provide this, but they can at least thwart the efforts of smaller minds to force Arrakis to their will.
May He keep the world for His people.
When the Fremen proclaim themselves the people of the Maker, it is not a lamentation, but a simple creed. They are Arrakis' people, and Arrakis is the Maker's sand, not controlled by the Harkonnens or the Emperor or anyone else who might try to lay claim to it from a distance. They do not cry out for rescue or rapture, but only to be kept in the home they know.
And, too—if this is a prayer, to whom is it offered? Can a Maker bless himself? Do they speak to a personified Nature, to the universe itself?
If religion were simple enough to be rationalized and squared away, the useful ethics cut out from culture-bound superstition, then the C.E.T. would have succeeded at syncretizing all human faiths. She cannot judge herself for failing to understand its complexities; she is a full-time planetologist. As well expect to be a qualified Guild Navigator and baliset performer and toxicologist all at once. Yet she still grows frustrated. What hope does she have of understanding the native life here, if she can't even fit in amid her own species?
Kynes keeps her visits to Carthag brief. Perhaps it is the Fremen's distaste of Harkonnens wearing off on her, perhaps her own prejudice, but there seems to be little study she can do in the city. Mostly it's an opportunity to restock on supplies and communicate with the broader galaxy.
Her parents send their love, and she sends hers in return, but their conversations are succinct. She doesn't particularly care who the latest Princess of House Corrino is flirting with, and doesn't exactly know how to describe her colleagues to her parents. Emmoh is a radiocaster, but he also learned to ride a Maker at age fifteen, so his eleven-year-old sister couldn't show him up. Jila, who has never seen an ocean, pesters her with questions about the life cycle of reefs. Kromb is curious about cactus anatomy, and as spiky and zealous as any warrior when observing the Ramadhan fasts. And Wavoll? Even she doesn't know what Wavoll is to her, other than that his acceptance of her has opened doors even beyond Sietch Two Birds. If she can't puzzle it out herself, small chance she can explain it to her parents.
Instead, she converses with her father when she's at work. In her imagination he is a patient instructor, guiding students to insight rather than feeding them the answers. "What do you study?"
"Arrakis."
"And?"
"Life itself?"
"And?"
"The galaxy, I suppose, every scholar does." This Pardot being fictive does not stop her from getting annoyed with him. "But that's too general."
"It's a system like any other system. What do you know about systems?"
"Complex, evolving systems tend to growth or stagnation. But growth is constrained by the limiting factor of the system."
"In this case?"
"Melange." Not only for the anti-geriatric effects it produces in those rich enough to consume it—though perhaps the human lifespan itself is a bound on how quickly the galaxy could change—but more fundamentally, for Guild Navigators. Without spice to alter navigators' senses, there would be no interstellar travel, no way to hold the Empire together.
"Why?"
"It's scarce because it can only be found on Arrakis."
"Why?"
"If the properties of melange were replicable on the atomic or molecular level, it could be synthesized elsewhere. There are plenty of planets with arid climates and sandstorms. But despite all the resources at the Empire's disposal, nothing like this has occurred since Arrakis was first colonized. So the unique properties of melange are biological."
"How so?"
"Interactions with the ecosystem as a whole."
"Be specific."
"There are lots of organisms—lizards, eagles, kangaroo mice—that have come from elsewhere in the galaxy and adapted here. It can't rely on any of these. And macroscopic, human-scale organisms like the dirrin cactus or the etti-bush, those have been reproduced off-planet too."
"So the melange?"
"It's linked to the Makers. They're large, dynamic, terrifying enough that they couldn't be realistically moved off-planet. Maybe if you had a DNA sample? But you'd still need the immense habitat, the dunes and the underground tunnels."
"And what constrains the sandworms?"
The idea of anything keeping sandworms in check is ludicrous. Not only are they the apex predators of the planet, they're orders of magnitude larger than anything that moves on many worlds. "The square-cube law?"
"Systems, Liet. Size isn't the only barrier."
"Toxicity." The Empire has made poison an art and a science; it's easy to forget that some substances are inimical to certain creatures without any assassination motives. "Sandworms can't tolerate water?"
"How do you know?"
"Observationally?" Again, Liet feels like snapping at dry air. "It hasn't been experimented upon, there are plenty of case studies—"
She breaks off. Case studies. About sandworms' susceptibility to water.
There are records of Bleak Planets where introducing any kind of Terranic life is immediately deleterious to nearly the entire ecosystem. These are written off, particularly by the ruthlessly profiteering Guild, as un-terraformable, and the Empire moves on. Arrakis is not such a world. The evolutionary danger of a hydrogen-oxide compound to sandworms is merely one detail about life in the dunes.
Which means water has always been here, in such quantities that the sandworms have evolved to avoid it. Salinated underground pools, where the rock is dense enough it won't be blown about by every sandstorm. Tiny pockets of water have always bubbled and endured.
And there could be more. Supposing the planet could be evacuated, targeted use of atomics could hollow out vast caverns, carefully dispersed to as to keep the inner gravitational fields symmetric. It would still need to be brought to the surface and desalinated, but similarly complex logistics take place on dozens of worlds, and none of them have produced the suffering of Arrakis. With water plentiful, the introduction of other species could be rapid—aquatic life below-ground, at first, and gradually sprouting through the sand. It would take less than a century, maybe even happen within Liet's own lifetime.
Only, the sandworms would go extinct. The spice would follow. Then the Guild. And the galaxy would dissolve into a thousand isolated worlds, crying out through space with no way to respond.
Transform Arrakis. Doom the cosmos.
"Father," Kynes says, but this time it's a child's plaintive whimper. "Please don't go."
She knows what Pardot would say to that—I'm as close as I've ever been, you have all you need—but now the illusion is gone, and she can't make herself hear his voice as anything but her imagination.
She needs a distraction, or coffee, maybe both. For a hot and liquid-poor planet, Arrakis appreciates coffee as a cultural delicacy. Before she can pour herself a mug, however, Wavoll intercepts her. Seeing her exhaustion, he asks, "What are you doing?"
Kynes doesn't think talking to my father would be a very good answer. "Work."
"Thinking," says Wavoll. "About the future."
"That's my job."
"You think too hard, and too far away. Be here, now."
When he reaches for her hand, she lets him lead her to his yali. He holds her close against him, their sweat mingling, and it smells like coffee and cinnamon.
It's one thing to ignore the cravings. The chances of finding squid or calamari in the desert are about as likely as the Padishah Emperor legalizing thinking machines, so she doesn't bother describing Instua food. But the anxieties that accompany her seem so rational, so convincing, that she can't shake them. "I don't know how to be a mother!" she blurts. "What if I mess it up?"
"You know more than all of us put together about the science of how living things grow," says Wavoll. "Humans are just part of nature."
"That's book-learning, that's different. I've never changed a diaper!"
"I'm sure Graite or Slunda would be happy to let you practice with their babies."
"Wavoll!"
"We can do it together. You put on your stillsuit every day, don't you?"
"Of course."
"It's the same principle. Liquid conservation."
Kynes nearly retches, but there's nothing left in her stomach after the morning nausea. The relentlessly practical Sayyadina had helped her install a special stillsuit layer for these eventualities, too.
"Not all bloodshed comes from battle wounds," she had said, making sure the nose plug and mouth filter were in place. Now, Kynes quotes it back to Wavoll, wondering if it's some kind of religious adage.
Wavoll smiles. "You know the first rule. The best place to store water is in the body."
"Of course."
"Every month before this, you bled, not because you had fought Harkonnens or challengers but because of your body's nature. Now, you withhold your blood, denying the sand even these drops of your moisture. You save it, not for yourself, but for our child. To spite the barren dust this way—what greater victory could there be?"
"You just say that because you love me."
"No," says Wavoll. "The others have more...regard, now, for you. You haven't noticed?"
"I've been busy," says Kynes, "trying to stay healthy with this temporary symbiote inside."
"They recognize that—" He breaks off, jittery, like he's had too much coffee. "Were you planning on remaining here for the birth?"
"It's your child. Where else would we go?"
"'We,'" he echoes. "You and me and our child, together. They listen to you, because you say that."
She doesn't completely believe him. But he stands by her, and that's enough.
In the weeks leading up to Kynes' delivery, the Sayyadina insists that she stay deep in the yali, not even getting up to go to the station. Kynes grows restless, but on Arrakis, haste is fatal. It gives her time to meet with other convalescing Fremen, some of whom are weak from childbirth, others from raids. And to her surprise, the station thrives in her absence. Perhaps enough students have taken her lessons to heart, or perhaps they work better without the strange, rigorous off-worlder looming behind them. Either way, rats run mazes, computers simulate storms, and hybrid cacti put forth shoots. "We'll have a new kind of fern in time for the baby," brags Kratta, and Kynes can only give a giddy smile. The baby!
The birth is not easy, and some part of her that is silent even from Wavoll yearns to be in an Imperial hospital, with all its attendant technology. The theoretical knowledge that humans, especially still-developing ones, need large craniums is hardly consolation when trying to push an infant skull through her birth canal. But when it's finished, there is a new child in the galaxy. She has Kynes' dark skin and Wavoll's thick eyebrows and eyes that are tiny specks of blue. The eyes of ibad will not shine blue-within-blue until she has been weaned, but this is a Fremen child, who has tasted the spice that has passed through her mother's body.
They name her Chani, but her sietch name is Sihaya, the springtime, the unseen day when the desert will flourish.
And while there is no ceremony to mark it, Kynes' name changes, too. While the Council of Leadership holds informal power, most sietches don't look farther than their own naibs for guidance. Yet as more and more Fremen speak with each other about the woman who has taught them to operate the stations, she is not Dr. Kynes, but Liet, the mother of Chani.
After the first labor comes the longer work of mothering. In some ways, Chani is a tether grounding Liet in the present. It is one thing to push through her own exhaustion and pain if there's a filter that needs to be set up or a computer that has to be debugged, but one cannot ignore a hungry, filthy baby for long.
Of course, Wavoll does his share, and more. When Liet resumes her travel between sietches, researching and teaching, Chani will not always be able to come with her. She needs to have ties to her own people, her own land. And as much as Liet has become accepted, she is still set apart, at times more symbol than person. With her father, Chani can be truly Fremen, not defined by a link to an empire she has never known.
Liet is grateful for Wavoll's care, for both of them, but also wistful. Part of her fears that she is inadequate, that his stepping up is merely a veil for her helplessness.
"We all think we're inadequate," says the Sayyadina, which doesn't succeed at being reassuring.
The Ramadhan fast provides impetus for Chani to wean, as well as to develop some semblance of a consistent sleep schedule. Though considering that Fremen are one of the few human societies to be nocturnal by their own planet's standards, that isn't saying much. Liet marvels that, of all the traditions from Terranic religion, it's a month for fasting that has endured on a planet with multiple moons. On Arrakis, the search for one's daily bread and water is already struggle enough. Why, how, can they willingly forego certain hours to eat?
"They denied us the Hajj," says Kromb. "We will never forgive and we will never forget."
"Those are the words of the ritual," Liet says. "I want your answer."
"That is my answer," Kromb says. He needs no ancestral memories to give him surety.
A culture full of people who never forgive is not much of an asset. Arrakis exemplifies the survival of the fittest and most adaptable, when any misstep could be your last. But kanly and grudges are just as alien to the scientific method as empathy and affection.
But people who never forget? Who recite age-old persecutions with every nightly parting? If they see themselves this deeply intertwined with the people of thousands of years and several planets ago, then the distance to their own world mere centuries in the future is scant by comparison. The underground lake scheme that Kynes had considered, and rejected, had been on the scale of decades. But if time was no constraint, if the end would not come under her watch nor Chani's nor Chani's children's, but by Fremen who had preserved and studied and adjusted the plan themselves...the bounds of possibility would expand in every direction, breaking into the expanding universe. Terranic cathedrals had taken decades or centuries to build, their laborers driven by faith rather than the chance of seeing it finished in their lives. Is this so different?
A creed simple enough that every Fremen in every sietch could recite it, understand its purpose, coupled with precise directions for the technicians to teach their acolytes. An unseen hope, and detailed outlines for which species to introduce when. Channeling the Fremen's rage at the Harkonnen tyranny, yet recognizing that the Imperial title to the planet may change many times before the world is transformed. Liet will need to be poet and statistician, imam and geologist. But she will not be alone.
"How precisely could you measure a quantity of water?" she asks Wavoll. "If you didn't have the station or any of those tools."
Wavoll laughs. "You have to know how much a milliliter is before you can decide whether you want to fight someone over it."
Double entendres aside, it's not always clear when Fremen are joking. "I mean, on a large scale."
"If you have a large quantity of water, you're not going to worry about measuring it to the nearest milliliter. You're going to worry about protecting yourself, so nobody can fight you for it."
Liet rolls her eyes.
"I know you know all this," says Wavoll. "Even if you were not born here, surely you understand that much. You don't need to ask me questions to make me feel useful."
"Answer me this, then. Do any of the sietches have a large drill? Not the kind the crawlers use to look for spice, but big enough to forge a new tunnel. Bigger than two or three yalis put together."
"You want a tunnel that size, pray to Shai-hulud. He might burrow his head up, just for you."
This time she knows that he's teasing, but not entirely kidding. "All right. So I need to get one next time I'm in Carthag."
"Are you going to undermine the Harkonnen mansion?"
"Something better," says Liet. "I'm digging a tunnel to the future."
Sietch after sietch, there is a prayer to consecrate a new reservoir. "Blessed be this basin, and the hands who made it. Blessed are those who fill it, and yet more blessed those who will shower its blessings upon the land. May we guard it with all that is within us."
Three percent. That is how much water they will need to have trapped before unleashing it all at once, exchanging one equilibrium for another. When Liet stands beside a new, empty reservoir and remembers how many more there are, and then thinks that all of these, over three or four centuries, will only hold three percent of the planet's water, she gets a dizzying sense of the planet's scale. But she always comes back to herself. It is just a reminder that this work will not be hers alone, and the sooner she can ready the next generation to continue it themselves, the better.
The next order of business is the spice, which is remarkably easy to deal with: smuggling and piracy are facts of life on Arrakis, and the Guild's appetite for melange has always been rapacious. "These are the first fruits of our land," she says. "One part is set aside for the Reverend Mothers, who transform it into the Water of Life. We must set another part aside to tithe to the Guild. This is the azakati. Just as we wear headdresses to guard us from the dust and the heat of the day, Arrakis itself will put on a veil to shroud it from the light and prying eyes of the galaxy."
Most schools can be decentralized. As long as each sietch has a handful of teachers who understand the purpose of the stations and reservoirs, they can operate independently from other sietches. Educating the youngest children, showing them how to count and match animal pictures with names, will serve an immediate purpose in leaving their parents free to work and raid. If the sietches see value in this, then in time they may let older students attend to more abstract concepts. Perhaps a youngster will be fourteen instead of twelve when she's strong enough to ride a Maker, but if those extra two years have taught her about the water cycle and latitudinal constraints and the food web, it will be well worth it.
But leaving every sietch for itself will not suffice when it comes to maintaining the reservoirs. Even people who would never defile their own sacred places might feel less compunction when it comes to raiding other tribes for their water. So the people who can be trusted with that knowledge must be numerous enough that the locations will be safe even without Liet and her contemporaries, but scarce enough that no immature raiders will doom the enterprise. Naibs have sworn oaths that they will never be taken alive; she needs people who will succumb to the desert, if need be, before jeopardizing the reservoirs. It's another reason to keep moving, travelling from sietch to sietch. By now, her reputation does precede her.
Still, as far as she ranges, whether visiting the villages or Carthag or even taking a palanquin south, she always returns to Two Birds. Where Chani and Wavoll are, that is home. At least, until the year Chani turns six.
Sietch Tabr is the home of Stilgar, Wavoll's brother. He is a charismatic but patient man, who was quick to see the wisdom of the reservoirs even without Wavoll's praise. Liet knows little more of his sietch, save that around the same time she left Two Birds to inspect a construction problem in Hagga Basin, a delegation from Two Birds was travelling to Tabr because the latter were having trouble building thumpers. Naturally, Wavoll joined them to visit Stilgar. She hears nothing more from Tabr, until she returns. It's Emmoh and Jila and Kromb who have to explain to her, in bits and pieces, what had happened.
"There was a youth, Ruash. An angry fellow, the sort who kills a dozen Harkonnens and still will not sheathe his crysknife."
"He saw that Wavoll had a child, and asked about her. But to mock, not from curiosity."
"So Wavoll told him of you, praising your brilliance and your work to foster life on the planet, and how you had given him a beautiful daughter."
"Then he asked if you wore the nezhoni scarf, or if you knew not our ways."
"And Wavoll said that you knew our ways very well, but did not wear the nezhoni. For while you are his associate, you have no son."
"So Ruash spoke ill of Wavoll and his manhood. He thought it wrong that a woman, and an off-worlder at that, should travel among the sietches and think to speak for all Fremen."
"But I don't!" Liet interrupts. "I can explain what I think is right, and help others try to understand. But if I tried to put words in anyone else's mouth? Most of you could put a knife in my ribs before I'd gotten out half a sentence."
"We know," says Jila. "But Ruash did not. He said that Wavoll ought to have kept you in the yali until you had a son, never mind what you or he wanted."
Liet winces. She and Wavoll had not discussed it in so many words, but he seemed to agree that, with Liet's duties, parenting one child was hard enough. Surely not everyone was like that, to regard her life as nothing until a male came forth from it. What sort of future could Chani dream of, if they were?
"And when Wavoll heard that, he was so furious that he issued a tahaddi challenge."
No. Not Wavoll, with his jokes and his mirth and his daughter to raise. He could not have been so rash, not for something as insubstantial as Liet's honor. She could bear any jibe, if the tanks were filled in the end.
"Ruash was angry, rage-driven. He made mistakes. When it was over, he had left two wives, both young and strong, with three children between them."
"What?" Liet says.
"It wasn't Ruash's first challenge, as you can imagine. He'd bested others and earned their wives—both of whom wore the nezhoni—and their homes are there, in Sietch Tabr. Wavoll may be a jester, but his heart is true, and he wouldn't abandon a family in need."
"You know how good a father he is to Chani," says Emmoh. "And some part of him will always love you. But it cannot have been easy for him, with you gone so often. And now, to have women who will marry him, build a home with, be his—"
"I understand," says Liet, her voice dull. It would be easier if she could rage, mourn, unleash her self-pity, but her body knows better than to expend frivolous tears this way. So instead she says, "And Ruash's water?"
"Wavoll had the rights to it," says Kromb. "But he made a show of entrusting it to the reservoirs. They gave him some rings as a symbol, that he had earned it but was giving it to the tribe instead. Stilgar says you ought to do that in the other sietches."
A symbol. If they will be working on behalf of the yet-unborn, it is no strange thing to thank the dead, by name, for their last gift. Yet despite how comfortable she has become with Fremen religion, this still sounds unnatural. Perhaps it is her disgust at the situation with Ruash and Wavoll, which has yet to recede from her instincts even though her rational mind tells her it is all over with.
"I'm sure you could follow him to Tabr, if you wanted," Emmoh says. "Though we will always have a home for you here."
"Perhaps this is a sign," Liet says ruefully. "If others think me of all sietches and none, then that is what I must become."
She travels farther and wider, now. The words of the ritual outstrip her; when she reaches a new sietch, she does not have to teach them how to construct or revere a reservoir, only train a few technicians to maintain the stations and monitor the ecosystems. In some sietches, the role of being Liet's representative is not a duty reserved for those too weak to do anything else, but an honor that strong warriors fight over. Thankfully, not to the point of bloodshed.
She spends time in the villages, too. Checking in on scientific news from the rest of the galaxy, and uploading her own studies, having carefully censored any practical conclusions. Keeping track of the pyons' mining profits and—frequently—losses. The amount that the Fremen must pay the Guild to keep their terraforming efforts secret is fairly stable. But as much as she thinks for the long-term, it's important to keep tabs on what events affect Arrakis now. Without Chani and Wavoll keeping her focus on the present, this is the next best thing.
There are changes, imperceptible in the moment, that make her readjust when she visits a new sietch. In Sietch Iflim, in the Red Chasm, metal rings have come to symbolize even more than water-counts. "To think it, Liet herself beneath our roof!" marvels Hassak. "Perhaps she will accept my rings for safekeeping."
Efatim snorts. "If Liet went around accepting every ring a man threw at her, she couldn't move for rattling."
They speak her name as if addressing a deity. And deities, Liet knows, should not be lovers. Even Shai-hulud himself, for all their prayers honor him, can be drowned—but not spoken to like an equal. She cannot take another man, now.
But if this tradition means that people will treat the reservoirs with awe, take pride in being able to carry another's ring even though no water is changing hands, then she doesn't mind. There are stranger superstitions.
Or the night near the Shield Wall where she is greeted by a cielago message. "Beast Rabban and his men roam to the east," says her distrans device, once it's decoded the low buzz. "Do not travel that way." Another species that has adapted to the harsh environment, its abilities yoked with human technology. Her distrans is simple, but with the exacting standards and durability that characterize Fremen make. If they take this much care with a simple communicator, how much more will they excel at securing the reservoirs!
Or the night where she travels by moonlight with a small troop near the False Wall, and happens to gaze up at the second moon. Without thought or deliberation, her mind gives a name to the pattern: Muad'Dib. The craters of the silent moon have nothing to do with the kangaroo mouse, of course, any more than those of the first moon resemble a human fist. But her mind no longer struggles to forcibly reconcile Fremen tradition with science. She simply sees, and understands, and moves on.
When Chani is twelve, she practices riding the little makers in preparation for becoming a full-fledged sandrider. By now, Stilgar is naib of Sietch Tabr. He cannot play favorites or rush youths before they are ready, but everyone knows what pride he takes in his niece.
So Liet studies too, spending a season at Tabr and mounting the little makers who are kept for the Water of Life. As small as they are, she knows that this is not a force to subdue, only to direct.
It is the longest she has stayed in one place since leaving Two Birds. Fortunately, Chani is too eager to learn to be embarrased by her mother's presence. Liet gets coffee with Wavoll, and meets his new child: Korla, another girl, with his gleeful laughter and her mother's height. Wavoll tells Liet, somewhat awkwardly, of his life and raiding triumphs since their parting. He does not ask of hers, not because he cannot understand it, but because there is no news to explain. The deeds of Liet, who promises a future paradise, are known in every sietch, carried by radio and cielago.
Chani, of course, calls a Maker and rides it brilliantly. "You're not going to try?" Stilgar asks Liet.
"I have more to lose than to gain," she points out. "If I succeed, no one will care. It's not a rite of passage, at my age. If I fail, it'll just be a reminder that I'm a clumsy off-worlder." She doesn't care if they lose faith in her; she's only a human. But they need to keep faith in the plan. And if putting her on a pedestal helps with that, it's well worth the cost.
"You're not worried that it could kill you?" says Chani.
"A Maker could kill me any day, if it so willed," says Liet. "Or a raid, or the Harkonnens, or poison." She does not look forward to that day, but the knowledge is dispersed enough that the reservoirs will be safe without her. On Arrakis, she can ask for no more security.
"Then you have to try. Just for the thrill of it."
"Thrill is a much less interesting motivation at my age than yours."
"Come on. You're always going on about the interconnectedness of the ecosystem, right? How do you fully connect with a Maker? By calling it, and riding it."
Liet rolls her eyes. "She gets it from both sides," Stilgar points out.
"I'm well aware," says Liet.
"You've made hooks and thumpers," Chani says. "Your craftsmanship's as good as anyone's. Don't tell me you can't use them."
One way or another, Liet knows, her time at Sietch Tabr is drawing to a close. Chani will range far and wide over the dunes now that she is old enough to ride alone, and Liet will return to the circuit, monitoring and tinkering. If the girl who skimmed the hot hemisphere of Instua in her 'thopter is ever to take flight again, it is now.
"It's a fair hypothesis," Liet teases. "Let's gather some data."
None of the Sayyadinas have seemed particularly interested in Liet's computer data, and Ramallo of Sietch Tabr is no exception. Recording experimental data, drawing schematics—these are luxuries for soft off-worlders. Reverend Mothers and their apprentices have rituals to conduct and stillsuits to mend.
So it surprises Liet when Ramallo joins her at dawn. "It is my job to watch," says Ramallo, "so that your feat can be remembered in the Chronicles."
"What Chronicles? I've never seen you keep a journal."
Ramallo grins. "There are more ways to record the past than your pens."
The cryptic taunt is infuriating, but Liet cannot afford to be distracted. She grips the hooks in her left hand. Humans across the galaxy use reins to mount horses and other beasts of burden, but also cast bait in the waters to attract fish. Is this some of each? The thought of comparing Makers to fish, on the dry seas of Arrakis, is absurd. Another distraction.
Liet sets the thumper and waits. It counts out a slow, even rhythm. There are many types of wormsign—sight, sound, the distant displacement of sand beneath one's feet—and she can recognize them all, even in the early morning when most Fremen would be resting in the sietch. It is not a question of if, but when.
She forces herself to unclench the hooks—it will not do to panic and release too early—until the noise of the thumper is lost within the friction of the Maker scraping across sand. Then she flings them high, where they catch in the worm's flesh. She lifts off the ground, letting the force of the worm's body move her rather than pulling and tautening the ropes. For a moment the world is askew, the morning horizon at an angle, and then she is bouncing on the back of the Maker.
Quickly, she undoes and refastens the hooks, so she can nudge the worm one way or another. In the distance, she can make out Ramallo's impassive gaze. Behind her, the other Tabr riders are lining up to join her.
Chani, as the least-experienced, brings up the rear. "I told you not to come," Liet scolds. Twelve may be old enough to ride a Maker, but not to watch her mother if Liet had failed.
"Father said I could," says Chani nonchalantly. "Where are we going, mudir?"
Governor: the one who holds the lead hooks and guides the Maker. Liet wouldn't mind the epithet so much if it were not also the one used for Beast Raddan. "West for a thumper or two, away from the sun."
"You're not going to another sietch already?" Chani asks.
"Not yet," says Liet. Below her, the Maker already seems less irritated, more resigned to the hooks. Even a human cannot shrug off the tip of a crysknife so quickly.
"I mean, if you had to, I could probably ride it back—"
"Chani," Stilgar interrupts firmly. Liet supposes that, on a world where every other twelve-year-old is constantly bragging about their sandriding mastery, it's a wonder tahaddi challenges don't take place even more often.
It's a short ride west before the sun is high enough that it won't be painful to look at on the way back, and more than hot enough to want to return. Liet slowly urges the worm into a wide right turn, and it trots forward. Beneath her are the makings of dozens of crysknives and untold quantities of melange, to say nothing of the Water of Life. The riders behind her think this as unremarkable as a 'thopter, maybe more familiar. Even Chani tries to act like she's an old hand, though of course she was the mudir only days before.
Once they return and alight, Liet releases the hooks, then takes cover. The Maker shakes itself, relieved that the annoyances in its rings are gone. Does it realize it was only the will of the insignificant humans on its back that brought about, and then removed, those pains? They hadn't ridden far enough for it to be exhausted, but it still seems to want to avoid the heat, slinking under the dunes and retreating. There is no recognizable pattern for wormsign in reverse; most people, with good reason, don't get close enough to watch one depart.
"Bless the coming and going of Him," Liet murmurs.
Even if she is not riding the worms between sietches, she does need to rotate on, to Gara Kulon and the Minor Erg and beyond. She returns to Tabr only briefly, and her meetings with Chani are short afterimages seared into her memory by the sun's glow. Chani at thirteen, teaching little Korla how to write her letters. Chani at fourteen, dancing beneath the second moon at the Al-Fitiri festival. Chani at fifteen, wearing a new headscarf. In the night, it is colorless and silent like the rest of the desert. By day, Liet sees that it is green, and set with intricate rings.
"A gift from a lover?" she teases.
Chani's smile is wistful. "These were Father's. As his eldest, I have the right to wear these for a year and a day, even while his water rests in the reservoir until the appointed time."
No one, not the Emperor nor the Council of Leaders nor Shai-hulud, and certainly not Liet herself, can appoint the time. But that's only a quibble, something to focus on instead of the fact that Wavoll is dead and she has done her mourning long ago. "I'm sorry," she manages. "For you and your family."
"Bi-lal kaifa," says Chani.
It is a surprise to be addressed as Dr. Kynes again, but that is how the Empire sees her. And they ask for more; they wish her to be Her Honor, Judge of the Change.
She has spent too long bribing the Guild and, before that, taking in castoffs as her students, because her first instinct is to look for the catch. Upon further consideration, however, she realizes that in her original role as Planetologist, she is the closest thing the Empire has to an independent representative. The Harkonnens are out for obvious reasons, and even if any of the pyons had the formal training needed, they would likely consider it a distraction from the profitable work of spice harvesting. The Fremen, for all their distaste for the Harkonnens, could likely be almost as judgmental towards another set of ignorant off-worlders. But she doesn't think the Empire keeps track of any Fremen by name. So Dr. Kynes it is.
Two things become readily apparent when she assumes her responsibilities. Firstly, that the Harkonnens want her to do anything in her power, if not more, to sabotage their successors. Secondly, that she doesn't need to. A random sampling of crawlers and carryalls confirms that much of the equipment is ill-maintained and likely to give out any day. Granted, that could be because the Harkonnens have run it into the ground through shoddy upkeep. But it isn't as if the transports the Harkonnens are taking with them are in much better shape. Once they're off Arrakis, they'll be sold for scrap rather than put to work on Caladan or any other hospitable planet.
Duke Leto of House Atreides must think himself a Maker, if the grandiose signs he sends preceding him are anything to go by. The Fremen report news of some scout called Idaho, used to dealing only with urban societies tightly connected by technology or small, isolated communities, unprepared for the widespread but unified sietch system. He wants to map the stations, not because of their scientific potential, but as advance bases. Kynes, who knows as well as anyone the difficulties an off-worlder would face getting answers, can only hope he's rebuffed by every sietch.
Leto himself invests in crude propaganda, telling the pyons he will be a kinder master than their last. Again, Kynes is unimpressed. It is the sort of chameleonic, ingratiating behavior that might work on Kaitain, but on Arrakis, things show their true faces. For all the Harkonnens' cruelty, that is one lesson they were quick to learn.
Leto requests to meet with Kynes herself, and there's no polite way to refuse when she owes him several more appearances at diplomatic events. His military advisor demands that she show the Duke "proper courtesy." If all the Atreides officers are this fussy, they are in for a rude awakening.
Unsurprisingly, Leto has no sense of how to wear the stillsuit, displaying it as if it's parade dress rather than a tool he needs to protect himself, far more useful than any shield. But the heir—young Master, according to Halleck—had somehow known how to dress himself. Curious.
Well, if she had to pause and reflect every time events seemed to match long-gone prophecies, nothing would ever get done. She accompanies them aboard the 'thopter, pointing out the sights below like a tour guide. Halleck turns out to be as bothersome a musician as he is an etiquette advisor. The Duke spots his first glimpse of wormsign, which for a miner would be a small spice bonus. Leto, at Halleck's recommendation, distributes the earnings among his laborers instead. Shrewd. The pyons are human; one may curry favor with them. The planet is not so forgiving.
But when the carryall doesn't show, and Leto leaps into action, it's clear it's not to impress the Judge of the Change. He's too busy to notice her. Ignoring the confusion of the men below, who can't fathom leaving the spice, he orders his own 'thopters to descend. If the Harkonnens did want to deliver a decapitation strike to House Atreides, they could hardly have arranged a better set of circumstances. Except this is Leto himself, not thinking about the Houses Major or the danger for his son or the melange, or anything except the men he now sees as his responsibility.
One could, she concedes, grow used to working with such a man.
A few days later she's obliged to attend the Duke's dinner party with other dignitaries, which is worth it if only to get a sense on where he believes that power on Arrakis lies. A smuggler, a banker, a Guild representative...not entirely inaccurate. Even Idaho is there. As much as Kynes would enjoy making him pay in water for revealing the importance of the bases to the Noble Born Sire, she recognizes that it wouldn't make the best impression at dinner.
That the Atreides have chosen to center their rule in Arrakeen rather than Carthag is of little consequence to her. At least, until someone points out the hypocrisy of Leto owning a verdant greenhouse while he signals his piety by not waving droplets in the peasants' faces. How will the propagandist deal with this?
To Kynes' surprise, it's the Duke's lady who answers. What's more, she says that they are only holding it in trust for the people of the planet, that they dream of the day when those plants can take root anywhere. Even if it's all for show, she's a quick-thinking politician in her own right, as savvy as the Duke if not more so. And if she's sincere—if they share a dream—
No. If the prophecies mean anything, they will come to pass regardless of what Kynes or Lady Jessica or anyone else do. And if they don't, she cannot afford to be swayed by Jessica's charming words. There is no room for error on Arrakis, and even less when Houses Major are involved. So she returns to making idle conversation with the dinner guests, hiding her pleasure that everyone else there seems just as bored of the small talk as she is.
Yet again, Duncan Idaho presents himself in front of Kynes, in a rage and ready to do violence. Yet again, she reluctantly concludes that she can't punish his espionage—because he's just faced down an army of Harkonnen goons and emerged in one piece. House Atreides are no saints, but she will not do the Harkonnens' job for them.
He demands that she tell the Landsraad of the betrayal, and she scoffs. What does he think his naivete will buy him, here?
"Even the Harkonnens fear the Bene Gesserit truthsayers," he says. "Your word will carry weight."
"And do what? Plunge the galaxy into civil war, House against House, with the galaxy's melange source in the crossfire?"
"My Duke is dead. What do I have to lose?"
"This planet," says Kynes, "is alive. Invisible to the naked eye, perhaps, but it lives. I will not risk it for your kanly. And you must have better things to do than throw your life away in a dead House's name."
"Leto is dead," Idaho repeats. "House Atreides lives. Paul and Jessica—the Harkonnens dare not kill them directly, not when a truthsayer could reveal it. There's still time."
Her crysknife is light at her back. It would be easy to cut him down, almost as easy to turn him away and ride out the storm.
But the dukedom lives. The woman who dreams of sharing her greenhouse with the world, the boy who wears his stillsuit like a man. They are hidden somewhere amid the dunes.
A glimpse of motion in the darkness. A cielago, perching on the wings of Idaho's 'thopter, its own wings outstretched. Quickly, Kynes speaks into the distrans: a warning, telling the Fremen to be ready. She broadcasts it, and the cielago takes off into the night. Idaho's eyes meet hers inquisitively.
"Let's go," she says. "Before the storm moves in."
Idaho pilots the 'thopter to where Jessica and Paul are taking refuge in a tent, and just as quickly continues to the nearest testing station. The irony of sheltering them in one of the bases Idaho and Leto yearned to control is not lost on Kynes.
Despite the danger of his situation, Paul now sounds like a fifteen-year-old. He thinks to expose the Harkonnens—and then ensure peace by becoming the Emperor's son-in-law! And when Kynes points out how obviously ludicrous this is, his first thought is of titles. "You will call me my Lord or Sire." Halleck's teaching must have gone to his head.
But the next words out of his mouth shake her. "Fremen speak of the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World who will lead them to Paradise."
Technically, the One Who Will Lead Us to Paradise is more often translated as a title of the Mahdi. The Zensunni scriptures are unclear as to whether this is the same person described as the Lisan al-Gaib, or not. But that's not what matters. What matters is that Paul Atreides, a child of fifteen, has heard the cries that arise to him, and treats them seriously.
"Superstition," says Kynes.
"I know you loved a Fremen warrior," he continues, "and lost him in battle. I know you walk in two worlds and are known by many names. I know your dream."
No Harkonnen bribe could buy her loyalty. She must be just as impartial and above reproach with the Atreides, even if they mask their greed in selflessness.
"As Emperor, I could make a Paradise of Arrakis with a wave of my hand."
Is this the faith of a messiah, or the delusion of a tyrant? Could it be both? Can the one who brings Paradise come from beyond, or must liberation arise from within?
But before she can respond, the roof falls in. Literally. At the clamor of metal, the young Duke rises to his feet, bounds down the hallway to where Idaho is dealing death, quick and brutal as the sandstorms. A score of Sardaukar surround him, and he meets them with the joy of a child hooking his first Maker. It seems Kynes will not have the chance to reprimand him for mapping the stations, after all.
Paul's grief at not being able to join his mentor is much greater than Kynes' regret. He wails as Jessica pulls him away, and Kynes throws the door shut behind them. Just as quickly, she shunts aside the file cabinet to reveal the secret door, and leads them into the tunnel.
Time grows short. "I appear to've decided," she mutters. "But you don't need to buy my loyalty with distant promises, Sire. You've earned it by being a man of integrity."
"And you have mine," says the Duke. "This world is my fiefdom; you are under my protection. I would lay down my life for you, if needs must."
Kynes gives a grim smile. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Yet she believes him. Mahdi or no Mahdi, the man is a Duke in full.
They reach the fork, and the arrows light up to mark Paul and Jessica's way. They say their brief goodbyes, and she vows to tell the full story to the galaxy. Sending inexperienced off-worlders five thousand meters into the air is hardly an ideal strategy, but if anyone can wait out the storm, it is the man who leapt onto the sands to guide the spice workers into his father's 'thopter.
She needs no arrows to guide her to the other exit. Stepping onto the sands, she looks for cielagos to relay the news ahead of her. There are none in sight, but that's fine. Desert creatures have many ways to move.
Maker hooks at the ready, she spies Paul and Jessica's 'thopter taking off, and her heart lifts in response. And then she is staggering, precious water dripping from a gash in her stillsuit as she falls down the dunes. Her crysknife is beyond her grasp, and the storm is encroaching in the oppressive sky. But she is no longer afraid.
The Sardaukar warriors close in. Didn't the Emperor boast that they were battle-hardened beyond compare? Yet here on Arrakis, they are fools, not ready for the Fremen's blades nor the power of the land.
"Kynes," the assassin says. "You betrayed the Emperor."
She forces herself to keep her fist steady, a methodical rhythm beneath the chaos in the sky. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"I serve only one master," says Liet. "His name is Shai-hulud."
Beneath her, the world collapses, as the great Maker comes to claim his own. The Sardaukar futilely scramble for a foothold, and Liet lets herself drown in the death that brings life.
Even amid the throes of war, the Fremen make time for music and ritual and love. Paul has come to recognize some of the ballads and chanties that Chani sings, but many of the songs are new to him.
"What were the women singing to my mother the other night?" he asks Chani, one night when they're huddled deep in the yali.
"Wells shall spring from thy womb,
In thy ashes, trees will bloom.
Peril lies in every choice,
Yet in choosing we are free.
Lead us by thy mighty voice
From across the galaxy."
"It's an old hymn," Chani says. "Sometimes interpreted as a reference to the Lisan al-Gaib—'voice from across the galaxy'—but the allusions to childbirth are unusual."
"They think my mother is the prophet? Or is it because she gave birth to me?"
Chani shrugs. "Some prophecies seem to mean whatever people want them to mean."
"And what do you believe?"
"Surely you are the Mahdi." Paul needs no preternatural visions to perceive her smile, fleeting in the darkness. "You lead me to Paradise with every step."
"I can see many futures," he says. "But that does not tell me which is certain, nor which is right."
"Yet in choosing we are free," Chani echoes. "Even if you bring a new future, it is up to each of us to follow."
Can this freedom really belong to every individual, and the Fremen as a whole, amid all the Bene Gesserit manipulations and spurious superstitions? Paul doesn't know, but he wants to believe it. For all his birthrights, he is still a man—a man who seeks to choose his own path, just like everyone else.
"You are Usul," Chani continues. "A strong name, a name of our people. Even if your birthworld is a place of great waters, your home is Arrakis. You speak with the lilt of Sietch Tabr."
Given all he has had to do to earn his place among the Fremen, Paul knows these are powerful words. "Thank you."
"But your mother? She may be a Sayyadina, and a weirding woman, but her accent will always be of the empire. Your voice is of our world, but perhaps she is the Voice of the Outer World. She is not the Mahdi, but she is worthy of great honor, for she carried and bore and suckled you."
"A forerunner," Paul says. Fremen theology is as thorny and obscure as any other culture's tradition. Sometimes a "prophet" refers to someone who makes a specific claim about the future, sometimes a moral leader who provides guidance, sometimes a harbinger of a messiah soon to come. The first sometimes applies to him, though he cannot say he particularly enjoys it; the second rarely, and who can say about the third? But he knows Jessica would accept the title, if she saw in it some advantage for him.
Chani nods. "It makes as much sense as anything else."
Paul considers this. "What about your mother?"
"What about her?"
He feels Chani stiffen next to him. "I would not speak of her if it pains you."
"It is not the pain of her death that wounds me," she says. "She died with honor, against a monstrous foe."
Like my father, Paul thinks, but neither need to say it.
"Only," Chani continues, "we were—not always close. She had her duties with the ecological stations, building the reservoirs, planning for the terraforming of Arrakis. It did not leave her much time to be a mother, and she was not born to Fremen ways. Sometimes I...resented her, for not being like other women. Yet now that she is gone from this life, I fear I may have been ungrateful, that I did not appreciate her dream."
Paul had spoken with Liet-Kynes only a few times, yet in their last meeting they had exchanged bonds so strong that she had died for him. Had he known more of her trust and loyalty than her daughter?
"She must have known you understood," he says. "She named you Sihaya, the desert spring. You were always part of her dream."
It is Chani's turn to blush, clinging to him, and whisper "Thank you."
"But think of it," Paul says. "Are you not a well of wisdom, the child of her body? Did she not unite the sietches in her vision, her name honored across the planet like none before? Was she not a voice from an outer world, foretelling the days of Paradise even though she knew she would not live to see them?"
Chani breaths in sharply. "The Lisan al-Gaib?"
"Prophecies are always uncertain," Paul says. "But as you say, I think it makes as much sense as anything else."
"She always laughed at the superstitions," Chani says. "I think the idea would amuse her."
Whatever the meaning of the ancient hymn, Paul knows one thing; he is not the first to seek to change the face of Arrakis, and he will not be the last. He does not need to be the fulfillment of every dream—the Fremen's, the Bene Gesserit's, the Emperor's, House Atreides'. The work that lies before him is great, but it is only one man's work. The Giver of Water may not have lived to drink from her own well, but in Sihaya and Stilgar, Emmoh and Kratta and all the others, she has poured forth the first droplets of a rivulet. It is together that they will sweep away any force in their path, joining with many others to become a mighty stream.