to flee? My decision was just made! A thrill of fear shot through Alia. How did The Preacher know?
“My fourth message is for Duncan Idaho,” he shouted. “Duncan! You were taught to believe that loyalty buys loyalty. Ohh, Duncan, do not believe in history, because history is impelled by whatever passes for money. Duncan! Take your horns and do what you know best how to do.”
Alia chewed the back of her right hand. Horns! She wanted to reach out and press the button which would summon guards, but her hand refused to move.
“Now I will preach to you,” The Preacher said. “This is a sermon of the desert. I direct it to the ears of Muad’Dib’s priesthood, those who practice the ecumenism of the sword. Ohhh, you believers in manifest destiny! Know you not that manifest destiny has its demoniac side? You cry out that you find yourselves exalted merely to have lived in the blessed generations of Muad’Dib. I say to you that you have abandoned Muad’Dib. Holiness has replaced love in your religion! You court the vengeance of the desert!”
The Preacher lowered his head as though in prayer.
Alia felt herself shivering with awareness. Gods below! That voice! It had been cracked by years in the burning sands, but it could be the remnant of Paul’s voice.
Once more The Preacher raised his head. His voice boomed out over the square where more people had begun to gather, attracted by this oddity out of the past.
“Thus it is written!” The Preacher shouted. “They who pray for dew at the desert’s edge shall bring forth the deluge! They shall not escape their fate through powers of reason! Reason arises from pride that a man may not know in this way when he has done evil.” He lowered his voice. “It was said of Muad’Dib that he died of prescience, that knowledge of the future killed him and he passed from the universe of reality into the alam al-mythal. I say to you that this is the illusion of Maya. Such thoughts have no independent reality. They cannot go out from you and do real things. Muad’Dib said of himself that he possessed no Rihani magic with which to encipher the universe. Do not doubt him.”
Again The Preacher raised his arms, lifted his voice in a stentorian bellow: “I warn the priesthood of Muad’Dib! The fire on the cliff shall burn you! They who learn the lesson of self-deception too well shall perish by that deception. The blood of a brother cannot be cleansed away!”
He had lowered his arms, found his young guide, and was leaving the square before Alia could break herself from the trembling immobility which had overcome her. Such fearless heresy! It must be Paul. She had to warn her guards. They dared not move against this Preacher openly. The evidence in the square below her confirmed this.
Despite the heresy, no one moved to stop the departing Preacher. No Temple guard leaped to pursue him. No pilgrim tried to stop him. That charismatic blind man! Everyone who saw or heard him felt his power, the reflection of divine talent.
In spite of the day’s heat, Alia felt suddenly cold. She felt the thin edge of her grip on the Imperium as a physical thing. She gripped the edge of her spy hole window as though to hold her power, thinking of its fragility. The balance of Landsraad, CHOAM, and Fremen arms held the core of power, while Spacing Guild and Bene Gesserit dealt silently in the shadows. The forbidden seepage of technological development which came from the edges of humankind’s farthest migrations nibbled at the central power. Products permitted the Ixian and Tleilaxu factories could not relieve the pressure. And always in the wings there stood Farad’n of House Corrino, inheritor of Shaddam IV’s titles and claims.
Without the Fremen, without House Atreides’ monopoly on the geriatric spice, her grip would loosen. All the power would dissolve. She could feel it slipping from her right now. People heeded this Preacher. It would be dangerous to silence him; just as dangerous as it was to let him continue preaching such words as he’d shouted across her square today. She could see the first omens of her own defeat and the pattern of the problem stood out clearly in her mind. The Bene Gesserits had codified the problem:
“A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions