AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Presently, Chani said: "Is there a maker here?"
"There are several," Jessica said with a touch of weariness. "We are never without them these days. Each victory requires its blessing. Each ceremony before a raid--"
"But Paul Muad'Dib has held himself aloof from these ceremonies," Chani said.
Jessica nodded to herself, remembering her son's ambivalent feelings toward the spice drug and the prescient awareness it precipitated.
"How did you know this?" Jessica asked.
"It is spoken."
"Too much is spoken," Jessica said bitterly.
"Get me the raw Water of the maker," Chani said.
Jessica stiffened at the tone of command in Chani's voice, then observed the intense concentration in the younger woman and said: "At once." She went out through the hangings to send a waterman.
Chani sat staring at Paul. If he has tried to do this, she thought. And it's the sort of thing he might try ....
Jessica knelt beside Chani, holding out a plain camp ewer. The charged odor of the poison was sharp in Chani's nostrils. She dipped a finger in the fluid, held the finger close to Paul's nose.
The skin along the bridge of his nose wrinkled slightly. Slowly, the nostrils flared.
Jessica gasped.
Chani touched the dampened finger to Paul's upper lip.
He drew in a long, sobbing breath.
"What is this?" Jessica demanded.
"Be still," Chani said. "You must convert a small amount of the sacred water. Quickly!"
Without questioning, because she recognized the tone of awareness in Chani's voice, Jessica lifted the ewer to her mouth, drew in a small sip.
Paul's eyes flew open. He stared upward at Chani.
"It is not necessary for her to change the Water," he said. His voice was weak, but steady.
Jessica, a sip of the fluid on her tongue, found her body rallying, converting the poison almost automatically. In the light elevation the ceremony always imparted, she sensed the life-glow from Paul--a radiation there registering on her senses.
In that instant, she knew.
"You drank the sacred water!" she blurted.
"One drop of it," Paul said. "So small ... one drop."
"How could you do such a foolish thing?" she demanded.
"He is your son," Chani said.
Jessica glared at her.
A rare smile, warm and full of understanding, touched Paul's lips. "Hear my beloved," he said. "Listen to her, Mother. She knows."
"A thing that others can do, he must do," Chani said.
"When I had the drop in my mouth, when I felt it and smelled it, when I knew what it was doing to me, then I knew I could do the thing that you have done," he said. "Your Bene Gesserit proctors speak of the Kwisatz Haderach, but they cannot begin to guess the many places I have been. In the few minutes I ...." He broke off, looking at Chani with a puzzled frown. "Chani? How did you get here? You're supposed to be .... Why are you here?"
He tried to push himself onto his elbows. Chani pressed him back gently.
"Please, my Usul," she said.
"I feel so weak," he said. His gaze darted around the room. "How long have I been here?"
"You've been three weeks in a coma so deep that the spark of life seemed to have fled," Jessica said.
"But it was .... I took it just a moment ago and ...."
"A moment for you, three weeks of fear for me," Jessica said.
"It was only one drop, but I converted it," Paul said. "I changed the Water of Life." And before Chani or Jessica could stop him, he dipped his hand into the ewer they had placed on the floor beside him, and he brought the dripping hand to his mouth, swallowed the palm-cupped liquid.
"Paul!" Jessica screamed.
He grabbed her hand, faced her with a death's head grin, and he sent his awareness surging over her.
The rapport was not as tender, not as sharing, not as encompassing as it had been with Alia and with the Old Reverend Mother in the cavern ... but it was a rapport: a sense-sharing of the entire being. It shook her, weakened her, and she cowered in her mind, fearful of him.
Aloud, he said: "You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me."
She shook her head, terrified by the very thought.
"Show it to me!" he commanded.
"No!"
But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she closed her eyes and focused inward-the-direction-that-is-dark.
Paul's consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness. She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen--a region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.
Presently, she opened her eyes, saw Paul staring up at her. He still held her hand, but the terrible rapport was gone. She quieted her trembling. Paul released her hand. It was as though some crutch had been removed. She staggered up and back, would have fallen had not Chani jumped to support her.
"Reverend Mother!" Chani said. "What is wrong?"
"Tired," Jessica whispered. "So ... tired."
"Here," Chani said. "Sit here." She helped Jessica to a cushion against the wall.
The strong young arms felt so good to Jessica. She clung to Chani.
"He has, in truth, seen the Water of Life?" Chani asked. She disengaged herself from Jessica's grip.
"He has seen," Jessica whispered. Her mind still rolled and surged from the contact. It was like stepping to solid land after weeks on a heaving sea. She sensed the old Reverend Mother within her ... and all the others awakened and questioning: "What was that? What happened? Where was that place?"
Through it all threaded the realization that her son was the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who could be many places at once. He was the fact out of the Bene Gesserit dream. And the fact gave her no peace.
"What happened?" Chani demanded.
Jessica shook her head.
Paul said: "There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed."
Jessica looked up, found Chani was staring at her while listening to Paul.
"Do you understand me, Mother?" Paul asked.
She could only nod.
"These things are so ancient within us," Paul said, "that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, 'Yes, I see how such a thing may be.' But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking."
"And you, my son," Jessica asked, "are you one who gives or one who takes?"
"I'm at the fulcrum," he said. "I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without ...." He broke off, looking to the wall at his right.
Chani felt a draft against her cheek, turned to see the hangings close.
"It was Otheym," Paul said. "He was listening."
Accepting the words, Chani was touched by some of the prescience that haunted Paul, and she knew a thing-yet-to-be as though it already had occurred. Otheym would speak of what he had seen and heard. Others would spread the story until it was a fire over the land. Paul-Muad' Dib is not as other men, they would say. There can be no more doubt. He is a man, yet he sees through to the Water of Life in the way of a Reverend Mother. He is indeed the Lisan al-Gaib.
"You have seen the future, Paul," Jessica said. "Will
you say what you've seen?"
"Not the future," he said. "I've seen the Now." He forced himself to a sitting position, waved Chani aside as she moved to help him. "The Space above Arrakis is filled with the ships of the Guild."
Jessica trembled at the certainty in his voice.
"The Padishah Emperor himself is there," Paul said. He looked at the rock ceiling of his cell. "With his favorite Truthsayer and five legions of Sardaukar. The old Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is there with Thufir Hawat beside him and seven ships jammed with every conscript he could muster. Every Great House has its raiders above us ... waiting."
Chani shook her head, unable to look away from Paul. His strangeness, the flat tone of voice, the way he looked through her, filled her with awe.
