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"Who said it?" Harah repeated.
"Nobody."
Alia used a corner of Jessica's aba to wipe the tears from her face. She smoothed the robe where she had dampened and crumpled it.
"Then don't you say it," Harah ordered.
"Yes, Harah."
"Now," Harah said, "you may tell me what it was like so that I may tell the others. Tell me what it is that happened to you."
Alia swallowed, looked up at her mother.
Jessica nodded.
"One day I woke up," Alia said. "It was like waking from sleep except that I could not remember going to sleep. I was in a warm, dark place. And I was frightened."
Listening to the half-lisping voice of her daughter, Jessica remembered that day in the big cavern.
"When I was frightened," Alia said, "I tried to escape, but there was no way to escape. Then I saw a spark ... but it wasn't exactly like seeing it. The spark was just there with me and I felt the spark's emotions ... soothing me, comforting me, telling me that way that everything would be all right. That was my mother."
Harah rubbed at her eyes, smiled reassuringly at Alia. Yet there was a look of wildness in the eyes of the Fremen woman, an intensity as though they, too, were trying to hear Alia's words.
And Jessica thought: What do we really know of how such a one thinks ... out of her unique experiences and training and ancestry?
"Just when I felt safe and reassured," Alia said, "there was another spark with us ... and everything was happening at once. The other spark was the old Reverend Mother. She was ... trading lives with my mother ... everything ... and I was there with them, seeing it all ... everything. And it was over, and I was them and all the others and myself ... only it took me a long time to find myself again. There were so many others."
"It was a cruel thing," Jessica said. "No being should wake into consciousness thus. The wonder of it is you could accept all that happened to you."
"I couldn't do anything else!" Alia said. "I didn't know how to reject or hide my consciousness ... or shut it off ... everything just happened ... everything ...."
"We didn't know," Harah murmured. "When we gave your mother the Water to change, we didn't know you existed within her."
"Don't be sad about it, Harah," Alia said. "I shouldn't feel sorry for myself. After all, there's cause for happiness here: I'm a Reverend Mother. The tribe has two Rev ...."
She broke off, tipping her head to listen.
Harah rocked back on her heels against the sitting cushion, stared at Alia, bringing her attention then up to Jessica's face.
"Didn't you suspect?" Jessica asked.
"Sh-h-h-h," Alia said.
A distant rhythmic chanting came to them through the hangings that separated them from the sietch corridors. It grew louder, carrying distinct sounds now: "Ya!Ya! Yawm! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, wallah! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, Wallah!"
The chanters passed the outer entrance, and their voices boomed through to the inner apartments. Slowly the sound receded.
When the sound had dimmed sufficiently, Jessica began the ritual, the sadness in her voice: "It was Ramadhan and April on Bela Tegeuse."
"My family sat in their pool courtyard," Harah said, "in air bathed by the moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and baklawa and mugs of liban--all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens and in our flocks, there was peace ... peace in all the land."
"Life was full with happiness until the raiders came," Alia said.
"Blood ran cold at the scream of friends," Jessica said. And she felt the memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared.
"La, la, la, the women cried," said Harah.
"The raiders came through the mushtamal, rushing at us with their knives dripping red from the lives of our men," Jessica said.
Silence came over the three of them as it was in all the apartments of the sietch, the silence while they remembered and kept their grief thus fresh.
Presently, Harah uttered the ritual ending to the ceremony, giving the words a harshness that Jessica had never before heard in them.
"We will never forgive and we will never forget," Harah said.
In the thoughtful quiet that followed her words, they heard a muttering of people, the swish of many robes. Jessica sensed someone standing beyond the hangings that shielded her chamber.
"Reverend Mother?"
A woman's voice, and Jessica recognized it: the voice of Tharthar, one of Stilgar's wives.
"What is it, Tharthar?"
"There is trouble, Reverend Mother."
Jessica felt a constriction at her heart, an abrupt fear for Paul. "Paul ..." she gasped.
Tharthar spread the hangings, stepped into the chamber. Jessica glimpsed a press of people in the outer room before the hangings fell. She looked up at Tharthar--a small, dark woman in a red-figured robe of black, the total blue of her eyes trained fixedly on Jessica, the nostrils of her tiny nose dilated to reveal the plug scars.
"What is it?" Jessica demanded.
"There is word from the sand," Tharthar said. "Usul meets the maker for his test ... it is today. The young men say he cannot fail, he will be a sandrider by nightfall. The young men are banding for a razzia. They will raid in the north and meet Usul there. They say they will raise the cry then. They say they will force him to call out Stilgar and assume command of the tribes."
Gathering water, planting the dunes, changing their world slowly but surely--these are no longer enough, Jessica thought. The little raids, the certain raids--these are no longer enough now that Paul and I have trained them. They feel their power. They want to fight.
Tharthar shifted from one foot to the other, cleared her throat.
We know the need for cautious waiting, Jessica thought, but there's the core of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do us. We lose our senses of purpose if the waiting's prolonged.
"The young men say if Usul does not call out Stilgar, then he must be afraid," Tharthar said.
She lowered her gaze.
"So that's the way of it," Jessica muttered. And she thought: Well I saw it coming. As did Stilgar.
Again, Tharthar cleared her throat. "Even my brother, Shoab, says it," she said. "They will le
ave Usul no choice."
Then it has come, Jessica thought. And Paul will have to handle it himself. The Reverend Mother dare not become involved in the succession.
Alia freed her hand from her mother's, said: "I will go with Tharthar and listen to the young men. Perhaps there is a way."
Jessica met Tharthar's gaze, but spoke to Alia: "Go, then. And report to me as soon as you can."
"We do not want this thing to happen, Reverend Mother," Tharthar said.
"We do not want it," Jessica agreed. "The tribe needs all its strength." She glanced at Harah. "Will you go with them?"
Harah answered the unspoken part of the question: "Tharthar will allow no harm to befall Alia. She knows we will soon be wives together, she and I, to share the same man. We have talked, Tharthar and I." Harah looked up at Tharthar, back to Jessica. "We have an understanding."
Tharthar held out a hand for Alia, said: "We must hurry. The young men are leaving."
They pressed through the hangings, the child's hand in the small woman's hand, but the child seemed to be leading.
"If Paul-Muad'Dib slays Stilgar, this will not serve the tribe," Harah said. "Always before, it has been the way of succession, but times have changed."
"Times have changed for you, as well," Jessica said.
"You cannot think I doubt the outcome of such a battle," Harah said. "Usul could not but win."
"That was my meaning," Jessica said.
"And you think my personal feelings enter into my judgment," Harah said. She shook her head, her water rings tinkling at her neck. "How wrong you are. Perhaps you think, as well, that I regret not being the chosen of Usul, that I am jealous of Chani?"
"You make your own choice as you are able," Jessica said.
"I pity Chani," Harah said.
Jessica stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I know what you think of Chani," Harah said. "You think she is not the wife for your son."
Jessica settled back, relaxed on her cushions. She shrugged. "Perhaps."
"You could be right," Harah said. "If you are, you may find a surprising ally--Chani herself. She wants whatever is best for Him."
Jessica swallowed past a sudden tightening in her throat. "Chani's very dear to me," she said. "She could be no--"
"Your rugs are very dirty in here," Harah said. She swept her gaze around the floor, avoiding Jessica's eyes. "So many people tramping through here all the time. You really should have them cleaned more often."
