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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."
Alia did not respond. She sat, caught in a personal memory which drew a blank expression on her face. Idaho, glancing over his shoulder at her, saw the expression and shuddered. It was as though she communed with voices heard only by herself.
"Relationships," he whispered.
And he thought: One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin--only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations. It was the same with governments--even the Regency. Old governments can be traced like discarded molts. I must carry out this scheme, but not in the way Alia commands.
Presently Alia shook her shoulders, said: "Leto should not be going out like that in these times. I will reprimand him."
"Not even with Stilgar?"
"Not even with him."
She arose from her mirror, crossed to where Idaho stood beside the window, put a hand on his arm.
He repressed a shiver, reduced this reaction to a mentat computation. Something in her revolted him.
Something in her.
He could not bring himself to look at her. He smelled the melange of her cosmetics, cleared his throat.
She said: "I will be busy today examining Farad'n's gifts."
"The clothing?"
"Yes. Nothing he does is what it seems. And we must remember that his Bashar, Tyekanik, is an adept of chaumurky, chaumas, and all the other subtleties of royal assassination."
"The price of power," he said, pulling away from her. "But we're still mobile and Farad'n is not."
She studied his chiseled profile. Sometimes the workings of his mind were difficult to fathom. Was he thinking only that freedom of action gave life to a military power? Well, life on Arrakis had been too secure for too long. Senses once whetted by omnipresent dangers could degenerate when not used.
"Yes," she said, "we still have the Fremen."
"Mobility," he repeated. "We cannot degenerate into infantry. That'd be foolish."
His tone annoyed her, and she said: "Farad'n will use any means to destroy us."
"Ahhh, that's it," he said. "That's a form of initiative, a mobility which we didn't have in the old days. We had a code, the code of House Atreides. We always paid our way and let the enemy be the pillagers. That restriction no longer holds, of course. We're equally mobile, House Atreides and House Corrino."
"We abduct my mother to save her from harm as much as for any other reason," Alia said. "We still live by the code!"
He looked down at her. She knew the dangers of inciting a mentat to compute. Didn't she realize what he had computed? Yet ... he still loved her. He brushed a hand across his eyes. How youthful she looked. The Lady Jessica was correct: Alia gave the appearance of not having aged a day in their years together. She still possessed the soft features of her Bene Gesserit mother, but her eyes were Atreides--measuring, demanding, hawklike. And now something possessed of cruel calculation lurked behind those eyes.
Idaho had served House Atreides for too many years not to understand the family's strengths as well as their weaknesses. But this thing in Alia, this was new. The Atreides might play a devious game against enemies, but never against friends and allies, and not at all against Family. It was ground into the Atreides manner: support your own populace to the best of your ability; show them how much better they lived under the Atreides. Demonstrate your love for your friends by the candor of your behavior with them. What Alia asked now, though, was not Atreides. He felt this with all of his body's flesh and nerve structure. He was a unit, indivisible, feeling this alien attitude in Alia.
Abruptly his mentat sensorium clicked into full awareness and his mind leaped into the frozen trance where Time did not exist; only the computation existed. Alia would recognize what had happened to him, but that could not be helped. He gave himself up to the computation.
Computation: A reflected Lady Jessica lived out a pseudo-life in Alia's awareness. He saw this as he saw the reflected pre-ghola Duncan Idaho which remained a constant in his own awareness. Alia had this awareness by being one of the pre-born. He had it out of the Tleilaxu regeneration tanks. Yet Alia denied that reflection, risked her mother's life. Therefore Alia was not in contact with that pseudo-Jessica within. Therefore Alia was completely possessed by another pseudo-life to the exclusion of all others.
Possessed!
Alien!
Abomination!
Mentat fashion, he accepted this, turned to other facets of his problem. All of the Atreides were on this one planet. Would House Corrino risk attack from space? His mind flashed through the review of those conventions which had ended primitive forms of warfare:
One--All planets were vulnerable to attack from space; ergo: retaliation /revenge facilities were set up off-planet by every House Major. Farad'n would know that the Atreides had not omitted this elementary precaution.
Two--Force shields were a complete defense against projectiles and explosives of non-atomic type, the basic reason why hand-to-hand conflict had reentered human combat. But infantry had its limits. House Corrino might have brought their Sardaukar back to a pre-Arrakeen edge, but they still could be no match for the abandoned ferocity of Fremen.
Three--Planetary feudalism remained in constant danger from a large technical class, but the effects of the Butlerian Jihad continued as a damper on technological excesses. Ixians, Tleilaxu, and a few scattered outer planets were the only possible threat in this regard, and they were planet-vulnerable to the combined wrath of the rest of the Imperium. The Butlerian Jihad would not be undone. Mechanized warfare required a large technical class. The Atreides Imperium had channeled this force into other pursuits. No large technical class existed unwatched. And the Empire remained safely feudalist, naturally, since that was the best social form for spreading over widely dispersed wild frontiers--new planets.
Duncan felt his mentat awareness coruscate as it shot through memory data of itself, completely impervious to the passage of time. Arriving at the conviction that House Corrino would not risk an illegal atomic attack, he did this in flash-computation, the main decisional pathway, but he was perfectly aware of the elements which went into this conviction: The Imperium commanded as many nuclear and allied weapons as all the Great Houses combined. At least half the Great Houses would react without thinking if House Corrino broke the Convention. The Atreides off-planet retaliation system would be joined by overwhelming force, and no need to summon any of them. Fear would do the calling. Salusa Secundus and its allies would vanish in hot clouds. House Corrino would not risk such a holocaust. They were undoubtedly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening "other intelligence" ever be encountered.
The computational thoughts had clean edges, sharp relief. There were no blurred between-places. Alia chose abduction and terror because she had become alien, non-Atreides. House Corrino was a threat, but not in the ways which Alia argued in Council. Alia wanted the Lady Jessica removed because that searing Bene Gesserit intelligence had seen what only now had become clear to him.
Idaho shook himself out of the mentat trance, saw Alia standing in front of him, a coldly measuring expression on her face.
"Wouldn't you rather the Lady Jessica were killed?" he asked.
The alien-flash of her joy lay exposed before his eyes for a brief instant before being covered by false outrage. "Duncan!"
Yes, this alien-Alia preferred matricide.
"You are afraid of your mother, not for her," he said.
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She spoke without a change in her measuring stare. "Of course I am. She has reported about me to the Sisterhood."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you know the greatest temptation for a Bene Gesserit?" She moved closer to him, seductive, looked upward at him through her lashes. "I thought only to keep myself strong and alert for the sake of the twins."
"You speak of temptation," he said, his voice mentat-flat.
"It's the thing which the Sisterhood hides most deeply, the thing they most fear. It's why they call me Abomination. They know their inhibitions won't hold me back. Temptation--they always speak with heavy emphasis: Great Temptation. You see, we who employ the Bene Gesserit teachings can influence such things as the internal adjustment of enzyme balance within our bodies. It can prolong youth--far longer than with melange. Do you see the consequences should many Bene Gesserits do this? It would be noticed. I'm sure you compute the accuracy of what I'm saying. Melange is what makes us the target for so many plots. We control a substance which prolongs life. What if it became known that Bene Gesserits controlled an even more potent secret? You see! Not one Reverend Mother would be safe. Abduction and torture of Bene Gesserits would become a most common activity."
