Part 34 (1/2)

-The Stilgar Commentaries

Leaving the scarred Celestial Audience Chamber empty, Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib sat on the great Hagal quartz chair and held court in his original throne room. Every day, he heard the clear, heart-wrenching misery expressed by so many faithful people, but he could not allow himself to be swayed. Yes, some of them had been crushed under the wheels of Paul's own government, but he could not allow himself to care for all of them, to feel the million little cuts of their individual pain. In a sense, their suffering was essential to humanity's continued existence. Paul's prescience had forced him to look at the larger picture, and hold a steady course. It was the greater, terrible purpose within him, the only way he could lead humankind to the end result. He had to be Muad'Dib, even if that meant he must appear harsh and cold.

Duke Leto Atreides, and before him Old Duke Paulus, had loved to meet the people face to face. They considered direct interaction with their subjects a vital aspect of remaining in touch, ruler to ruled. After Bludd's shocking actions, though, and the subsequent discoveries of one embryonic conspiracy after another, Paul found the process of holding court to be exhausting, frustrating, and dangerous. The previous Caladan dukes had managed a single group of people, a single planet - but Paul had to shoulder the burden of so many planets that he could not name them all without calling upon his Mentat training.

Henceforth, he decided that he would delegate more of these responsibilities to Alia. She seemed to have a different relations.h.i.+p with her conscience, a way to compartmentalize what must be done. His sister, with all her past lives and remembered experiences, could govern with a firm, stern hand. And because the people were frightened of the girl's strangeness, they would see her more as a priestess than a ruler. Alia could use that to her advantage.

One morning, before the first group of supplicants was allowed into the heavily guarded chamber, Princess Irulan appeared before Paul, asking permission to speak with him. Beside the throne, Stilgar and Alia looked at Irulan with their usual suspicions, but Paul understood her motives better and trusted her to behave according to established patterns.

She wore a look of concern and puzzlement on her face. ”My Husband, I have received a message from a Guild courier. It was addressed to me, asking for my intercession.” Frowning, she extended the cylinder to Paul.

Intrigued, he took the doc.u.ment, noted the intricate seals that Irulan had already broken open. As Paul read, Irulan explained to Stilgar and Alia, ”Lady Margot Fenring requests a favor.”

”Lady Margot?” Alia asked, drawing upon her mother's memories as well as her own. ”We have heard nothing from her in years.”

The Count and his Lady, after initially joining Shaddam IV in exile on Salusa Secundus following the Battle of Arrakeen, had remained only a brief time before embarking on their own and disappearing from view - apparently with no love lost between them and the fallen Emperor. Paul knew the Count was quite a dangerous character, a schemer to rival the most Machiavellian of the Bene Gesserits or the Harkonnens.

Paul read the message, feeling a flicker of warning in his prescient senses, though nothing distinct. Much about Hasimir Fenring - another failed Bene Gesserit attempt to breed a Kwisatz Haderach - had always been murky to him. ”It is odd that they took sanctuary among the Tleilaxu,” he said. ”I did not foresee this request. I had forgotten that Lady Margot has a daughter.”

”And what does this woman want from you, Usul?” Stilgar asked.

After nearly drowning on Jericha, the faithful naib had returned to Arrakis and now chose to serve directly at the side of Muad'Dib, as Minister of State. Stilgar had decided his true worth was in leaders.h.i.+p, rather than fighting on distant planets, and Paul had to agree.

The Emperor set the message cylinder aside. ”She asks permission to send her daughter Marie here, wants her to be raised and trained in our Imperial court.”

Irulan was clearly unsettled by the idea. ”I do not understand why.”

”A better question is, why would you be suspicious of her, rather than advocating it?” Alia countered. ”Count Fenring was a close friend of your father's, while Lady Margot is a prominent Bene Gesserit. Wasn't Margot a boon companion to your own mother, Lady Anirul?”

”And to your mother as well,” the Princess replied. ”But I am always troubled by things I do not understand.”

”Is Count Fenring the natural father of the child?” Paul asked.

”Lady Margot does not suggest otherwise. I cannot tell either way.”

”And if Count Fenring is no longer with Shaddam, was there truly a falling-out between them, or is this part of an overall scheme?” Alia added. ”Our spies have suggested that the Count has a great deal of antipathy toward Shaddam. Is the rift real, or merely an act?”

Paul remembered the dire insult and the obvious coolness that Fenring had exhibited toward the Emperor in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Arrakeen, while Paul himself had felt an odd sort of kins.h.i.+p with Fenring. Though they were entirely dissimilar men, he and the Count had certain exceptional qualities in common.

”Salusa Secundus is not a pleasant place,” Stilgar said. ”Or so I have heard.”

”Comforts mean little to Count Fenring,” Paul said. ”For years, he served on Arrakis as the Imperial Spice Minister. I suspect that he left Salusa, not because he wanted a finer palace, but because he could no longer stand being with Shaddam.”

Irulan's demeanor hardened. ”My father often took action before he possessed all the facts. He simply expected the rest of the Imperium to bow to his will, whether or not his decisions were wise or rational. He often acted without consulting Count Fenring, and as a result got himself into terrible debacles. The Count grew tired of cleaning up after my father's messes.”

With a sigh, Paul leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees.

”The question remains - how shall we respond to this request? Lady Margot wishes to send her little daughter here for schooling, and no doubt to make connections. The girl is only six years old. Could their motives be as straightforward as wanting to get into my good graces, since they abandoned Shaddam IV?”

”Occam's Razor suggests that may be the real answer,” Irulan said. ”The simplest answer does make perfect sense.”

”Occam's Razor is dull where the Bene Gesserit are concerned,” Alia said. ”I know from the clatter in my head that they have always schemed and plotted.”

Paul lifted the filmy sheets again and read the words Margot had imprinted there: ”'Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides, I humbly and respectfully request a favor. Though my husband has chosen to take refuge among the Tleilaxu, I am convinced that this is not the environment in which our daughter should be raised. The misogynist Tleilaxu culture is reprehensible in my eyes. I ask leave for Marie to come to your court in Arrakeen and spend the remainder of her formative years there, if her company should prove acceptable to you.'”

Paul set down the sheets. ”Then Lady Margot also reminds me - unnecessarily - that she was the one who left a message in the conservatory of the Arrakeen Residency to warn my mother of a hidden Harkonnen threat. There is no disputing that, or the accuracy of her information.”

”She has placed a water-debt on you,” Stilgar said. The old naib's brow furrowed, and he ran his fingers along the dark beard on his chin. ”And yet, I cannot understand why she would offer us such an important hostage.”

”That works both ways,” Paul said. ”We may have the little girl as a hostage, but we are also allowing a potential spy into the royal court.”

Irulan was surprised. ”She's only a child, my Lord. Just six years old.”

”I am just a little girl too,” Alia said, letting the rest of them draw their own comparisons and conclusions. Then she crossed her legs and sat down on the step in front of the Lion Throne, adjusting her child-sized black aba robe. ”I think I would like to have a playmate, Brother.”

Increasingly, I am only able to see myself through the eyes of the monster.

-from Muad'Dib and the Jihad Muad'Dib and the Jihad by the PRINCESS IRULAN by the PRINCESS IRULAN

Paul hadn't slept well for seven nights in a row, and he couldn't hide the fact from Chani. She got up in the still darkness and came to stand by him on the balcony. Paul had pa.s.sed through the moisture seal and wore only a loose, lightweight tunic in the dry air, wasting water. No stillsuit. Chani did the same.

When did I forget the basic lessons of Arrakis? he thought. he thought. Just because I am Emperor, does that mean water costs me nothing? Just because I am Emperor, does that mean water costs me nothing?

Listening to the humming restlessness of the vast city, he absorbed the vibrations in the air, the mixture of scents that filled every breath, unfiltered by stillsuit nose plugs. Arrakeen reminded him of an insect hive, filled with countless skittering subjects, all needing someone else to think for them, to decide for them, to command them.

He looked up into the night sky, saw the stars and imagined all the worlds out there, all the battles still taking place. With a faint smile, he recalled something Irulan had added to one of her stories, an obvious yet mythic fabrication - that at the moment of Duke Leto's death, a meteor had streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan....

”It pains me to see you so troubled every night, Beloved.” He turned to Chani, let out a long sigh. ”My Sihaya, the people trouble me. I have known since childhood that this must come to pa.s.s, and I wanted them to trust me, to join me in this journey, to cooperate instead of forcing me to become a tyrant. Now they obey not because it is the right thing to do for the ultimate good of humanity, but because Muad'Dib commands it. If I walked out in the streets during any hour of the day, crowds would form and demand incessantly 'Guide us, my Lord! Guide us!' Is that what humanity needs, the danger of relying on a charismatic leader?”

”Perhaps you need guidance yourself, Usul,” Chani said quietly, stroking his dark hair away from his ear. ”The guidance of Shai-Hulud. Perhaps you need to remember what it means to be a Fremen. Go out in the desert, summon a worm, and make your own hajj.”

He turned to kiss her on the mouth. ”As always, you make me see clearly. Only in the desert can a man's thoughts be still enough for him to think.” This was exactly what both Paul Atreides and the Emperor Muad'Dib needed.

LEAVING ALIA BEHIND behind as his delegate, he granted her the authority to make the appropriate decisions and perform necessary court functions, with Stilgar positioned as the girl's adviser and protector (not that she needed one). Paul had offered to take Chani along on his journey, but after studying his face for a long moment, she declined. ”You require solitude and stillness, Usul. You and the desert have much to say to each other.”

Sometimes she thought in ways that did not occur to him, as if her mind filled an essential portion of the container of his life. Their relations.h.i.+p was far more than that of a man and a woman, or of kindred spirits, or of any of the usual cliches. The feelings they held for each other stretched across the eons of human existence.

As the sun rose, he took a 'thopter beyond the broken s.h.i.+eld Wall, past the water trenches that kept the deep-desert worms at bay, and landed at the edge of the vast, open desert. Unfortunately, though he had intended to depart alone, without ceremony, an entourage of a.s.sistants, advisers, and gawking observers soon followed. Korba transmitted that he had summoned them to provide Muad'Dib with the fanfare he deserved.

Ignoring them, dwelling on his own concerns, he turned his back on the unwelcome crowd and walked away from his landed 'thopter, trudging out onto the dunes where he could summon a worm. He glanced over his shoulder and was dismayed to see eight 'thopters and perhaps a hundred people, some dressed in desert fas.h.i.+on, some wearing the robes of the Qizara priesthood. At least a third of them did not even wear stillsuits.

Korba should know better. should know better. When had it changed that people would venture out to the desert as if attending a parade? Paul felt that the purity of the sands had already been lost. The Fremen were so enamored with their continual string of Jihad victories that they failed to recognize the loss of their heritage, the loss of their very souls. When had it changed that people would venture out to the desert as if attending a parade? Paul felt that the purity of the sands had already been lost. The Fremen were so enamored with their continual string of Jihad victories that they failed to recognize the loss of their heritage, the loss of their very souls.