Children of Dune

A deep sigh shook Halleck. The boy would die out there for sure if the sandblast storm caught him. It would eat the flesh from his bones and sliver the bones to fragments. The contrived false death would become real. He slapped a fist into an open palm. The storm could trap them in the sietch. They couldn't even mount a search. And storm static had already isolated the sietch.

"Distrans," he said, thinking they might imprint a message onto a bat's voice and dispatch it with the alarm.

Namri shook his head. "Bats won't fly in a storm. Come on, man. They're more sensitive than we are. They'll cower in the cliffs until it's past. Best to wait for the satellites to pick us up again. Then we can try to find his remains."

"Not if he took a Fremkit and hid in the sand," Sabiha said.

Cursing under his breath, Halleck whirled away from them, strode out into the sietch.

= = = = = =

Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance. -The Words of My Father: an account of Muad'Dib reconstructed by Harq al-Ada

"She's training him? She's training Farad'n?"

Alia glared at Duncan Idaho with a deliberate mix of anger and incredulity. The Guild heighliner had swung into orbit around Arrakis at noon local. An hour later the lighter had put Idaho down at Arrakeen, unannounced, but all casual and open. Within minutes a 'thopter had deposited him atop the Keep. Warned of his impending arrival, Alia had greeted him there, coldly formal before her guards, but now they stood in her quarters beneath the north rim. He had just delivered his report, truthfully, precisely, emphasizing each datum in mentat fashion.

"She has taken leave of her senses," Alia said.

He treated the statement as a mentat problem. "All the indicators are that she remains well balanced, sane. I should say her sanity index was -"

"Stop that!" Alia snapped. "What can she be thinking of?"

Idaho, who knew that his own emotional balance depended now upon retreat into mentat coldness, said: "I compute she is thinking of her granddaughter's betrothal." His features remained carefully bland, a mask for the raging grief which threatened to engulf him. There was no Alia here. Alia was dead. For a time he'd maintained a myth-Alia before his senses, someone he'd manufactured out of his own needs, but a mentat could carry on such self-deception for only a limited time. This creature in human guise was possessed; a demon-psyche drove her. His steely eyes with their myriad facets available at will reproduced upon his vision centers a multiplicity of myth-Alias. But when he combined them into a single image, no Alia remained. Her features moved to other demands. She was a shell within which outrages had been committed.

"Where's Ghanima?" he asked.

She waved the question aside. "I've sent her with Irulan to stay in Stilgar's keeping."

Neutral territory, he thought. There's been another negotiation with rebellious tribes. She's losing ground and doesn't know it... or does she? Is there another reason? Has Stilgar gone over to her?

"The betrothal," Alia mused. "What are conditions in the Corrino House?"

"Salusa swarms with outrine relatives, all working upon Farad'n, hoping for a share in his return to power."

"And she's training him in the Bene Gesserit..."

"Is it not fitting for Ghanima's husband?"

Alia smiled to herself, thinking of Ghanima's adamant rage. Let Farad'n be trained. Jessica was training a corpse. It would all work out.

"I must consider this at length," she said. "You're very quiet, Duncan."

"I await your questions."

"I see. You know, I was very angry with you. Taking her to Farad'n!"

"You commanded me to make it real."

"I was forced to put out the report that you'd both been taken captive," she said.

"I obeyed your orders."

"You're so literal at times, Duncan. You almost frighten me. But if you hadn't, well..."

"The Lady Jessica's out of harm's way," he said. "And for Ghanima's sake we should be grateful that -"

"Exceedingly grateful," she agreed. And she thought: He's no longer trustworthy. He has that damnable Atreides loyalty. I must make an excuse to send him away... and have him eliminated. An accident, of course.

She touched his cheek.

Idaho forced himself to respond to the caress, taking her hand and kissing it.

"Duncan, Duncan, how sad it is," she said. "But I cannot keep you here with me. Too much is happening and I've so few I can completely trust."

He released her hand, waited.

"I was forced to send Ghanima to Tabr," she said. "Things are in deep unrest here. Raiders from the Broken Lands breached the qanats at Kagga Basin and spilled all of their waters into the sands. Arrakeen was on short rations. The Basin's alive with sandtrout yet, reaping the water harvest. They're being dealt with, of course, but we're spread very thin."