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"Now!" Paul shouted, and dropped his hand.
Gurney depressed the blast trigger.
It seemed that a full second passed before they felt the ground beneath them ripple and shake. A rumbling sound was added to the storm's roar.
The Fedaykin watcher from the telescope appeared beside Paul, the telescope clutched under one arm. "The Shield Wall is breached, Muad'Dib!" he shouted. "The storm is on them and our gunners already are firing."
Paul thought of the storm sweeping across the basin, the static charge within the wall of sand that destroyed every shield barrier in the enemy camp.
"The storm!" someone shouted. "We must get under cover, Muad'Dib!"
Paul came to his senses, feeling the sand needles sting his exposed cheeks. We are committed, he thought. He put an arm around the signalman's shoulder, said: "Leave the equipment! There's more in the tunnel." He felt himself being pulled away, Fedaykin pressed around him to protect him. They squeezed into the tunnel mouth, feeling its comparative silence, turned a corner into a small chamber with glowglobes overhead and another tunnel opening beyond.
Another signalman sat there at his equipment.
"Much static," the man said.
A swirl of sand filled the air around them.
"Seal off this tunnel!" Paul shouted. A sudden pressure of stillness showed that his command had been obeyed. "Is the way down to the basin still open?" Paul asked.
A Fedaykin went to look, returned, said: "The explosion caused a little rock to fall, but the engineers say it is still open. They're cleaning up with lasbeams."
"Tell them to use their hands!" Paul barked. "There are shields active down there!"
"They are being careful, Muad'Dib," the man said, but he turned to obey.
The signalmen from outside pressed past them carrying their equipment.
"I told those men to leave their equipment!" Paul said.
"Fremen do not like to abandon equipment, Muad'Dib," one of his Fedaykin chided.
"Men are more important than equipment now," Paul said. "We'll have more equipment than we can use soon or have no need for any equipmert."
Gurney Halleck came up beside him, said: "I heard them say the way down is open. We're very close to the surface here, m'Lord, should the Harkonnens try to retaliate in kind."
"They're in no position to retaliate," Paul said. "They're just now finding out that they have no shields and are unable to get off Arrakis."
"The new command post is all prepared, though, m'Lord," Gurney said.
"They've no need of me in the command post yet," Paul said. "The plan would go ahead without me. We must wait for the--"
"I'm getting a message, Muad'Dib," said the signalman at the communications equipment. The man shook his head, pressed a receiver phone against his ear. "Much static!" He began scribbling on a pad in front of him, shaking his head waiting, writing... waiting.
Paul crossed to the signalman's side. The Fedaykin stepped back, giving him room. He looked down at what the man had written, read:
"Raid... on Sietch Tabr ... captives... Alia (blank) families of (blank) dead are... they (blank) son of Muad'Dib ...."
Again, the signalman shook his head.
Paul looked up to see Gurney staring at him.
"The message is garbled," Gurney said. "The static. You don't know that ...."
"My son is dead," Paul said, and knew as he spoke that it was true. "My son is dead ... and Alia is a captive ... hostage." He felt emptied, a shell without emotions. Everything he touched brought death and grief. And it was like a disease that could spread across the universe.
He could feel the old-man wisdom, the accumulation out of the experiences from countless possible lives. Something seemed to chuckle and rub its hands within him.
And Paul thought: How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty!
And Muad'Dib stood before them, and he said: "Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me. "
--from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
THE BARON Vladimir Harkonnen stood with eyes downcast in the Imperial audience chamber, the oval selamlik within the Padishah Emperor's hutment. With covert glances, the Baron had studied the metal-walled room and its occupants--the noukkers, the pages, the guards, the troop of House Sardaukar drawn up around the walls, standing at ease there beneath the bloody and tattered captured battle flags that were the room's only decoration.
Voices sounded from the right of the chamber, echoing out of a high passage: "Make way! Make way for the Royal Person!"
The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV came out of the passage into the audience chamber followed by his suite. He stood waiting while his throne was brought, ignoring the Baron, seemingly ignoring every person in the room.
The Baron found that he could not ignore the Royal Person, and studied the Emperor for a sign, any clue to the purpose of this audience. The Emperor stood poised, waiting--a slim, elegant figure in a gray Sardaukar uniform with silver and gold trim. His thin face and cold eyes reminded the Baron of the Duke Leto long dead. There was that same look of the predatory bird. But the Emperor's hair was red, not black, and most of that hair was concealed by a Burseg's ebon helmet with the Imperial crest in gold upon its crown.
Pages brought the throne. It was a massive chair carved from a single piece of Hagal quartz-blue-green translucency shot through with streaks of yellow fire. They placed it on the dais and the Emperor mounted, seated himself.
An old woman in a black aba robe with hood drawn down over her forehead detached herself from the Emperor's suite, took up station behind the throne, one scrawny hand resting on the quartz back. Her face peered out of the hood like a witch caricature--sunken cheeks and eyes, an overlong nose, skin mottled and with protruding veins.
The Baron stilled his trembling at sight of her. The presence of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor's Truthsayer, betrayed the importance of this audience. The Baron looked away from her, studied the suite for a clue. There were two of the Guild agents, one tall and fat, one short and fat, both with bland gray eyes. And among the lackeys stood one of the Emperor's daughters, the Princess Irulan, a woman they said was being trained in the deepest of the Bene Gesserit ways, destined to be a Reverend Mother. She was tall, blonde, face of chiseled beauty, green eyes that looked past and through him.
"My dear Baron."
The Emperor had deigned to notice him. The voice was baritone and with exquisite control. It managed to dismiss him while greeting him.
The Baron bowed low, advanced to the required position ten paces from the dais. "I came at your summons, Majesty."
"Summons!" the old witch cackled.
"Now, Reverend Mother," the Emperor chided, but he smiled at the Baron's discomfiture, said: "First, you will tell me where you've sent your minion, Thufir Hawat."
The Baron darted his gaze left and right, reviled himself for coming here without his own guards, not that they'd be much use against Sardaukar. Still....
"Well?" the Emperor said.
"He has been gone these five days, Majesty." The Baron shot a glance at the Guild agents, back to the Emperor. "He was to l
and at a smuggler base and attempt infiltrating the camp of the Fremen fanatic, this Muad'Dib."
"Incredible!" the Emperor said.
One of the witch's clawlike hands tapped the Emperor's shoulder. She leaned forward, whispered in his ear.
The Emperor nodded, said: "Five days, Baron. Tell me, why aren't you worried about his absence?"
"But I am worried, Majesty!"
The Emperor continued to stare at him, waiting. The Reverend Mother emitted a cackling laugh.
"What I mean, Majesty," the Baron said, "is that Hawat will be dead within another few hours, anyway." And he explained about the latent poison and need for an antidote.
"How clever of you, Baron," the Emperor said. "And where are your nephews, Rabban and the young Feyd-Rautha?"
"The storm comes, Majesty. I sent them to inspect our perimeter lest the Fremen attack under cover of the sand."
"Perimeter," the Emperor said. The word came out as though it puckered his mouth. "The storm won't be much here in the basin, and that Fremen rabble won't attack while I'm here with five legions of Sardaukar."
"Surely not, Majesty," the Baron said, "But error on the side of caution cannot be censured."
"Ah-h-h-h," the Emperor said. "Censure. Then I'm not to speak of how much time this Arrakis nonsense has taken from me? Nor the CHOAM Company profits pouring down this rat hole? Nor the court functions and affairs of state I've had to delay--even cancel--because of this stupid affair?"
The Baron lowered his gaze, frightened by the Imperial anger. The delicacy of his position here, alone and dependent upon the Convention and the dictum familia of the Great Houses, fretted him. Does he mean to kill me? the Baron asked himself. He couldn't! Not with the other Great Houses waiting up there, aching for any excuse to gain from this upset on Arrakis.
"Have you taken hostages?" the Emperor asked.
"It's useless, Majesty," the Baron said. "These mad Fremen hold a burial ceremony for every captive and act as though such a one were already dead."
"So?" the Emperor said.
And the Baron waited, glancing left and right at the metal walls of the selamlik, thinking of the monstrous fanmetal tent around him. Such unlimited wealth it represented that even the Baron was awed. He brings pages, the Baron thought, and useless court lackeys, his women and their companions-hair-dressers, designers, everything ... all the fringe parasites of the Court. All here--fawning, slyly plotting, "roughing it" with the Emperor ... here to watch him put an end to this affair, to make epigrams over the battles and idolize the wounded.
