A Mentat's Dream
A domesticated animal is made captive by his habits. Not by his owner, not by his cage. Train a donkey to be tied to a pole, and eventually it will stay close to it even when it is not tied anymore. Even when the rope dangles on the ground, the animal thinks itself captive.
- THE ZENSUNNI WANDERER
For the first time in a long time, Duncan Idaho could not sleep. The familiar white noise of the no-ship which had become his permanent home, and perhaps his final home, the soft echoes from the hallways, the darkness around him did not help.
Where is the market to accept our fugitive talents?
He had always been a man of action, brilliant in his own way but impulsive as well. Long-term plans were the stuff of the Master of Assassins and Mentats. And while he was a Mentat, too, his mind could work other ways. So he had devised with Sheeana a plan to evade the Bene Gesserit on Chapterhouse, to flee as renegades in the Scattering. This was a half-plan, really. The other half, he reminded himself, was improvisation. Adapt the plan to the circumstances. They were an unidentifiable craft in an unidentifiable universe.
That was not what bothered him though. In a move that had been completely instinctual, he had also evaded the vision of the strange couple, whom for lack of a better term he called the Gardeners; he had escaped their net, erased the ship's computer memory and performed a random jump in foldspace.
He rolled on a side, chest bare, extending an arm seeking a comforting presence that was not there. No matter how much his intellectual mind reminded him, his instinct looked every night for the Murbella he had left behind. His body ached at that realization. The sexual imprinting had been two-way, that fateful evening on Gammu, and he never had tried to push the boundaries of that dependency. How long before the withdrawal crisis kicked in? It would have to be much more painful than drug withdrawal. Would the separation drive him mad? He surely knew no cure. My sweet, indomitable Murbella...
His body was twitching spasmodically, just at the memory of her smell. Gradually the spasms passed. He closed his eyes once again, started reviewing all his lifespans in sequence, memory after memory. That was his sleep medicine.
Sunsets on the sea, seagulls screaming in the wind as the evening breeze moved the waves. How many loves the young Atreides cadet had on Caladan! He remembered a blonde girl in her twenties, whispering in his ears the gentle words of a Danian song.
Ginaz, Grumman - nothing but metal and training, until his nerves became as swift as a Laza tiger's.
Sands and rocks creating landscapes in hues of blue, yellow and purple. Stilgar the Naib at Sietch Tabr, offering him spice coffee. People come and go like the sand, but friends bonded in water are grounded on the rock. The Fremen! Their wise ways of the desert, rooted in their unchangeable faith in doom. Doomed creatures, like doomed had been their desert.
The sweet face of Alia of the Knife, young Alia with her musical laughter. That was a different me. That Duncan that was designed as a weapon for both the Emperor Muad'Dib and his sister, the Zensunni philosopher.
Another memory intruded. I recalled meeting Leto II as the God Emperor for the first time. "Died twice for the Atreides," that child in a living stillsuit had said resting on his father's golden throne in Arrakeen, "rest assured, Duncan Idaho, that I will hatch a plan so bold, a plan so vigorous, one that humanity has never been able to envision. Would you be part of it? I have a most demanding role which needs a virtuoso, and you just look like the part."
"Died twice as you said, sire, Leto. So why did you bring me back? Are you anxious for me to die a third time in the Atreides service? Haven't you had enough of those Tleilaxu dogs?"
"I will not care about how many times you die for us, Duncan. But I reward loyalty. Ask me of anything." the Emperor said, extending his trout-covered arm. So much gravity in such a young scion.
"What do you want me to say? You brought me back, but I have nothing left to care about."
"You could build a new life. Leave Dune for good."
"And renege my oath to your House?"
"I would not hunt you down."
"Free me from the oath then!"
"If you will renege on your oath, I promise not to exact justice. No revenge or retort."
"But you won't free me from it!"
"Would you take the oath today, if you hadn't already?"
"Nonsense! You are Paul's son. I died to save your sister," then he had added, "But you scare me. You sound more Fremen than Atreides."
"[using Leto I Atreides' voice] Duncan, raise above! Don't you see my grandson needs you more than ever?"
"How.. you..."
"You have been told, but now you experience it. I am House Atreides, Duncan. All of it. You are welcome back to our service. I plant a seed that will be for you to cultivate. You are a hunter, but one day you will turn into a farmer. One day, I tell you truly, you will be freed from this oath, I promise. Then, to what end will you put your precious gifts?"
Am I really free? It sure did not feel it. More than elation, he felt a sense of tragedy.
His oath was to an ideal, what House Atreides represented in the past. A union of pride, military camaraderie, an obligation to serve the people to one's limits.
I swore an oath of allegiance to the Atreides people who embodied the Atreides code. That code survived through the millennia and it is everything I care about, now that the Atreides people I swore allegiance to are gone. What will I do then? Dedicate myself to an Atreides ideal?
What now?
His plan had been to free himself from the grasp of the Sisterhood.
I never swore an oath to the Bene Gesserit.
Thoughts of Jessica came back to him .A long, long time ago, he was in love with her, as was every lieutenant in the House. In his time under Leto II he had married more than one woman who looked like Jessica reborn, picked among the Emperor's Fish Speakers. Just like Miles Teg was a carbon copy of the original Duke Leto I of Caladan.
What a formidable memory those genes had, flowing down the centuries in countless new bloodlines.
So, whom or what do I serve now?
Realization gripped him. I have never had to decide that in all my past lives.
He felt immersed in a universe of possibilities, planets floating around him in the void, each one leading to a different story. His cellular matrix was incomplete, I could see it, yet he felt the past from all his past lives. Using the very same awareness, he let himself float in the void, all Mentat senses dormant, expecting nothing.
An image of Siona came into his memory. A verdant planet, a house overlooking a desert.
"How does it make you feel, to have produced countless sons and daughters throughout all your lives?"
Duncan lost all awareness, and deep, dreamless slumber came like a cool wave of silence over him.