Part 38 (1/2)
On short notice that morning, Paul had summoned the Count, taking him beneath the eastern wing of the citadel - away from guards and eavesdroppers. ”Do you doubt my ability to defend myself - even from someone like him?” Paul had asked the anxious Fedaykin, and they had withdrawn their objections. Nevertheless, where this man was concerned, Paul's prescience was hopelessly unreliable.
Count Hasimir Fenring. Such a notorious, dangerous reputation he had, but Paul had always felt a faint echo of compa.s.sion for this person who had served Shaddam IV, sensing that perhaps he had more in common with Fenring than either of them realized.
”I know what you are, Count - what the Bene Gesserit wanted you to be. I sensed things about you from the moment I laid eyes on you in the Padishah Emperor's presence. You are much like me.”
”Hm-m-m-m. And how is that?”
”Each of us is a failed Kwisatz Haderach - failed in the eyes of the Sisterhood, at least. They didn't get what they wanted from you, and they cannot control me. I am not surprised they would be so fascinated with your daughter.”
”Ahh, who can understand the myriad breeding schemes of witches?”
”Who can understand the many things we must do?” Paul added.
After ending the Thorvald rebellion with emphatic violence, Paul had been forced to sterilize two more planets, completely eradicating their populations. Sterilization... worse even than what had happened on Salusa Secundus, worse than what Viscount Moritani had threatened to do on Grumman. Paul realized that he barely felt any guilt over what he had done.
Have I become so accustomed to causing death and destruction? become so accustomed to causing death and destruction? At the thought, a cold wave pa.s.sed through his chest. At the thought, a cold wave pa.s.sed through his chest.
He remembered killing Jamis in combat, the first life he had ever taken. He had been shaken but proud of his accomplishment, until his mother brought down a hammer of guilt on him. Well, now - how does it feel to be a killer? Well, now - how does it feel to be a killer?
He had grown too comfortable with the feeling. Muad'Dib could order the annihilation of worlds without a second thought, and no one would question him. Paul, the human, could never allow himself to forget that.
Because Count Fenring had also been groomed as a Kwisatz Haderach, also intended to be a p.a.w.n... maybe the two of them had a common basis for understanding that Paul could not experience with anyone else, not even with Chani.
Reaching the bottom of the stairway, Paul stood at the opening of a rock-lined tunnel. ”I am not a G.o.d, Count Fenring, despite the mythology that has arisen around me.” He motioned to the left, where a side pa.s.sageway was illuminated by glowglobes that bobbed with the slight disturbance in the air.
”We, hmmm, have much to learn from one another. And perhaps through that understanding we can better learn about ourselves. You would like us to be, ahh-hmm-mm, friends? Do you forget that Shaddam told me to fight you after the Battle of Arrakeen?”
”I remember that you refused. It is the difference between pragmatism and loyalty, Count. You saw who was the victor and who was the vanquished, and you made your choice.”
”Yes, hmm, but I did voluntarily accept exile with Shaddam, until I felt the need to move on. We did not want our daughter raised on Salusa Secundus.”
They rounded a bend, where the pa.s.sageway narrowed. ”All relations.h.i.+ps change, Count Fenring, and as humans we must adapt to them or die.”
”Adapt or die?” Warily, the Count peered down the tunnel in one direction and another. ”Um-m-m-ah, do you have interrogation chambers down here?”
”All Empires require such things,” Paul answered. ”The Corrinos certainly did.”
”Hmm-ahh, of course. I am sure that the intrigues in your citadel are not so very different from what they once were on Kaitain.” He cleared his throat, as if something dry had lodged there.
”Actually there is a difference, Count, because I am as much Fremen as Atreides. The desert determines my actions as much as my n.o.ble blood, and I have more than mere politics - I have religion. As much as I don't want to be, I am a religion. Similarly, my warriors are more than simple fighters. They also see themselves as my missionaries.”
Paul paused at a small, dark opening, where he activated controls to seal a metal door behind them, removing all light. In the darkness, he heard Fenring breathing, and smelled his fear-saturated perspiration. Involuntary moisture loss. Involuntary moisture loss. After only a brief pause, he opened a second door and entered a larger chamber where dim, awakening illumination responded to their arrival. After only a brief pause, he opened a second door and entered a larger chamber where dim, awakening illumination responded to their arrival.
”In a sense, we're going back in time.” He waited for Fenring to notice the paintings and writings all around them, strange designs on every possible surface of walls, floor, and ceiling. ”This is an ancient Muadru site, long buried. Probably older than the Fremen presence on Dune.”
”Fabulous. How fortunate you are to find such a site. In all my years in the Residency, it seems I was unaware of the treasures beneath my feet.”
Hearing this, Paul felt his truthsense twinge, like an alarm beginning to go off but not quite sounding. Did it have something to do with Paul's inability to see Fenring with his own prescience, some clas.h.i.+ng of the auras of two failed Kwisatz Haderachs? Or was it a bit of a lie from the Count about the Muadru site? But if so, why would he hide such knowledge?
The Count was careful not to disturb any of the markings. ”Ahh, I was far too interested in the more obvious treasures of melange, I suppose.”
Paul did not try to conceal the awe in his voice. ”This chamber is the smallest hint of the race that settled numerous planets, long before the Zensunni Wanderers. Apparently they arrived on Dune before it became such a desert. Some legends suggest they even brought the sandworms from elsewhere, but I cannot say. We know very little about them.”
”Your name comes from the Muadru?”
”There appears to be a linguistic connection between the Fremen and the Muadru, but the latter race vanished at independent sites all over the galaxy - suggesting a terrible cataclysm that took them all at once.”
The unlikely pair walked around the chamber, looking closely at the drawings, numerals, letters, and other artwork; there were color paintings using unknown pigments, and etchings in the cool stone. ”Hmm-ah, perhaps you missed your calling, Sire - you might have been an archaeologist instead of an Emperor.” Fenring chuckled at his own suggestion.
”People know me for my Jihad, but I like to think I am excavating the truth of humanity, digging up what must be found and purging what must be eliminated. Always seeking the truth, always pointing toward it.” Paul sealed the chamber again and led Fenring back the way they had come. ”So many legends and stories surround me, but how many of them are really true? Who can know what really happens in history, even when you live through it yourself?”
Fenring fidgeted. ”I happened to observe, ahh-hmm, that Princess Irulan is writing yet another volume in her ever-growing biography. Revisionist history?”
”Just more of my story. The people demand it. Billions speak of me in heroic terms, but the stories about me are incomplete. Just as they are about you, I suspect. We're alike, aren't we, Count Fenring? We are much more than what people say about us.”
”We have our loyalties,” he said enigmatically.
Paul had no illusions about his guest. If it suited his needs, Fenring could very well turn against him. On the other hand, an Emperor could use a man with Fenring's clandestine skills and subtlety. The Count certainly knew his way around in elite circles. Paul guided him down a new corridor rather than returning to the stone steps that would lead them back up into the light.
”Where, hmm, are we, ahhh, going now?”
Paul opened another door. ”One of my private cellars. I'd like to share a bottle of Caladanian wine with you.”
”Much better than a torture chamber,” Fenring said.
The human body and the human soul require different types of nourishment. Let us partake of a feast in all things.
-CROWN PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO, Call to the Jongleurs
It was supposed to be an intimate banquet for Paul and the Fenrings, with Chani, Irulan, and the two girls, but for the Emperor Muad'Dib nothing was permitted to be informal.
Alia knew that the places had been chosen with care. Paul and Chani would sit beside one another at the head of the table, with Alia next to her brother on his right side, then little Marie, and farther down the table would be Count Fenring and his Lady, far enough away from Paul, should the Fenrings make any attempt against him. On the left side, Irulan would sit closest to the head of the table, across from Alia and Marie; then Stilgar, and finally Korba where the two Fremen could watch the Count and Lady.
The room had been swept for chemical explosives such as the bomb that had detonated beneath Muad'Dib's throne, metal objects, weapons of any kind, automated tools of a.s.sa.s.sination. Grim Fremen stood guard in the kitchen, monitoring the preparation of every dish. Poison-sniffers hovered over the banquet table. All utensils were smooth and dull, minimizing their potential use as weapons.
Ever since Bludd's hunter-seeker attack, Stilgar had insisted that Paul and his party wear s.h.i.+elds when in the presence of visitors, even at meals, though it always made the process of dining somewhat awkward.
Korba felt that Paul's own prescient skills, though erratic, could enhance even the most extravagant security preparations. During the planning stages he had insisted, ”Muad'Dib, if there is danger, your predictive powers could give us warning.”
Paul had cut the man off. ”Where Count Fenring is concerned, Korba, little is clear to me, ever.”
Although Fedaykin guards were stationed in the hall, Stilgar could not allow himself to merely be a fellow dinner guest; instead, he vowed to serve as Paul's personal bodyguard. Ever suspicious of the Count, Stilgar had personally scanned Marie's clothes and paid close attention to every item Fenring and his Bene Gesserit wife brought into the banquet chamber, but he found no weapons, no poisons, nothing unusual.
The dinner party met in the former dining hall of the old Arrakeen Residency. This was a historically significant room, where Alia's brother and parents had broken bread when they first arrived on Arrakis - before Harkonnen treachery had changed everything. There had been no straight-line progression in her brother's life from then to now, nor in Alia's. As servants put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on the table and the chefs were hard at work, Alia stood near her chair, waiting for her eminent brother to enter.
After Marie's parents had arrived on Arrakis, the girl's style of play had altered subtly as they improvised more games, making Alia wonder if her friend was somehow subdued or intimidated by them. ”Are you afraid they'll take you back to Tleilax?” Alia had asked in a whisper.
”I will never go back to the Tleilaxu.” Marie sounded as if she was stating a fact, rather than making a defiant p.r.o.nouncement.