Dune

Somehow that had been the most frightening thing of all: to find that the gift carried no threat.

In the end they’d accepted the fine clothing and had gone on to the other issue: Was the Lady Jessica to be given a position on the Council? Alia had managed to delay a vote.

She thought of this as she stared down at The Preacher.

Things which happened to her Regency now were like the underside of that transformation they inflicted upon this planet. Dune had once symbolized the power of ultimate desert. That power dwindled physically, but the myth of its power grew apace. Only the ocean-desert remained, the great Mother Desert of the inner planet, with its rim of thorn bushes, which Fremen still called Queen of Night. Behind the thorn bushes arose soft green hills bending down to the sand. All the hills were man-made. Every last one of them had been planted by men who had labored like crawling insects. The green of those hills was almost overpowering to someone raised, as Alia had been, in the tradition of dun-shaded sand. In her mind, as in the minds of all Fremen, the ocean-desert still held Dune in a grip which would never relax. She had only to close her eyes and she would see that desert.

Open eyes at the desert edge saw now the verdant hills, marsh slime reaching out green pseudopods toward the sand—but the other desert remained as powerful as ever.

Alia shook her head, stared down at The Preacher.

He had mounted the first of the terraced steps below the Temple and turned to face the almost deserted square. Alia touched the button beside her window which would amplify voices from below. She felt a wave of self-pity, seeing herself held here in loneliness. Whom could she trust? She’d thought Stilgar remained reliable, but Stilgar had been infected by this blind man.

“You know how he counts?” Stilgar had asked her. “I heard him counting coins as he paid his guide. It’s very strange to my Fremen ears, and that’s a terrible thing. He counts ’shuc, ishcai, qimsa, chuascu, picha, sucta, and so on. I’ve not heard counting like that since the old days in the desert.”

From this, Alia knew that Stilgar could not be sent to do the job which must be done. And she would have to be circumspect with her guards where the slightest emphasis from the Regency tended to be taken as absolute command.

What was he doing down there, this Preacher?

The surrounding marketplace beneath its protective balconies and arched arcade still presented a gaudy face: merchandise left on display with a few boys to watch over it. Some few merchants remained awake there sniffing for the spice-biscuit money of the back country or the jingle in a pilgrim’s purse.

Alia studied The Preacher’s back. He appeared poised for speech, but something withheld his voice.

Why do I stand here watching that ruin in ancient flesh? she asked herself. That mortal wreckage down there cannot be the “vessel of magnificence” which once was my brother.

Frustration bordering on anger filled her. How could she find out about The Preacher, find out for certain without finding out? She was trapped. She dared not reveal more than a passing curiosity about this heretic.

Irulan felt it. She’d lost her famous Bene Gesserit poise and screamed in Council: “We’ve lost the power to think well of ourselves!”

Even Stilgar had been shocked.

Javid had brought them back to their senses: “We don’t have time for such nonsense!”

Javid was right. What did it matter how they thought of themselves? All that concerned them was holding onto the Imperial power.

But Irulan, recovering her poise, had been even more devastating: “We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?”

And all over the question of whether to accept a gift from House Corrino.

Irulan will have to be disposed of, Alia decided.

What was that old man down there waiting for? He called himself a preacher. Why didn’t he preach?

Irulan was wrong about our decision-making, Alia told herself. I can still make proper decisions! The person with life-and-death decisions to make must make decisions or remain caught in the pendulum. Paul had always said that stasis was the most dangerous of those things which were not natural. The only permanence was fluid. Change was all that mattered.

I’ll show them change! Alia thought.

The Preacher raised his arms in benediction.