Dune

Duncan saw Alia studying him, turned away. Love could not hide the changes in her, nor conceal from him the transparency of her motives. The many-faceted metal eyes which the Tleilaxu had given him were cruel in their ability to penetrate deception. They limned her now as a gloating, almost masculine figure, and he could not stand to see her thus.

“Why do you turn away?” Alia asked.

“I must think about this thing,” he said. “The Lady Jessica is . . . an Atreides.”

“And your loyalty is to House Atreides, not to me,” Alia pouted.

“Don’t put such fickle interpretations into me,” he said.

Alia pursed her lips. Had she moved too rapidly?

Duncan crossed to the chambered opening which looked down on a corner of the Temple plaza. He could see pilgrims beginning to gather there, the Arrakeen traders moving in to feed on the edges like a pack of predators upon a herd of beasts. He focused on a particular group of tradesmen, spice-fiber baskets over their arms, Fremen mercenaries a pace behind them. They moved with a stolid force through the gathering throng.

“They sell pieces of etched marble,” he said, pointing. “Did you know that? They set the pieces out in the desert to be etched by stormsands. Sometimes they find interesting patterns in the stone. They call it a new art form, very popular: genuine storm-etched marble from Dune. I bought a piece of it last week—a golden tree with five tassels, lovely but very fragile.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Alia said.

“I haven’t changed the subject,” he said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not art. Humans create art by their own violence, by their own volition.” He put his right hand on the windowsill. “The twins detest this city and I’m afraid I see their point.”

“I fail to see the association,” Alia said. “The abduction of my mother is not a real abduction. She will be safe as your captive.”

“This city was built by the blind,” he said. “Did you know that Leto and Stilgar went out from Sietch Tabr into the desert last week? They were gone the whole night.”

“It was reported to me,” she said. “These baubles from the sand—would you have me prohibit their sale?”

“That’d be bad for business,” he said, turning. “Do you know what Stilgar said when I asked why they went out on the sand that way? He said Leto wished to commune with the spirit of Muad’Dib.”

Alia felt the sudden coldness of panic, looked in the mirror a moment to recover. Leto would not venture from the sietch at night for such nonsense. Was it a conspiracy?

Idaho put a hand over his eyes to blot out the sight of her, said: “Stilgar told me he went along with Leto because he still believes in Muad’Dib.”

“Of course he does!”

Idaho chuckled, a hollow sound. “He said he still believes because Muad’Dib was always for the little people.”

“What did you say to that?” Alia asked, her voice betraying her fear.

Idaho dropped his hand from his eyes. “I said, ‘That must make you one of the little people.’”

“Duncan! That’s a dangerous game. Bait that Fremen Naib and you could awaken a beast to destroy us all.”

“He still believes in Muad’Dib,” Idaho said. “That’s our protection.”

“What was his reply?”

“He said he knew his own mind.”

“I see.”

“No . . . I don’t believe you do. Things that bite have longer teeth than Stilgar’s.”

“I don’t understand you today, Duncan. I ask you to do a very important thing, a thing vital to . . . What is all of this rambling?”

How petulant she sounded. He turned back to the chambered window. “When I was trained as a mentat . . . It is very difficult, Alia, to learn how to work your own mind. You learn first that the mind must be allowed to work itself. That’s very strange. You can work your own muscles, exercise them, strengthen them, but the mind acts of itself. Sometimes, when you have learned this about the mind, it shows you things you do not want to see.”

“And that’s why you tried to insult Stilgar?”

“Stilgar doesn’t know his own mind; he doesn’t let it run free.”

“Except in the spice orgy.”

“Not even there. That’s what makes him a Naib. To be a leader of men, he controls and limits his reactions. He does what is expected of him. Once you know this, you know Stilgar and you can measure the length of his teeth.”

“That’s the Fremen way,” she said. “Well, Duncan, will you do it, or won’t you? She must be taken and it must be made to look like the work of House Corrino.”

He remained silent, weighing her tone and arguments in his mentat way. This abduction plan spoke of a coldness and a cruelty whose dimensions, thus revealed, shocked him. Risk her own mother’s life for the reasons thus far produced? Alia was lying. Perhaps the whisperings about Alia and Javid were true. This thought produced an icy hardness in his stomach.

“You’re the only one I can trust for this,” Alia said.

“I know that,” he said.

She took this as acceptance, smiled at herself in the mirror.

“You know,” Idaho said, “the mentat learns to look at every human as a series of relationships.”