Jessica listened to the sounds of the troop, hearing her own footsteps and Paul’s, marveling at the way the Fremen moved. They were forty people crossing the basin with only the sounds natural to the place—ghostly feluccas, their robes flitting through the shadows. Their destination was Sietch Tabr—Stilgar’s sietch.
She turned the word over in her mind: sietch. It was a Chakobsa word, unchanged from the old hunting language out of countless centuries. Sietch: a meeting place in time of danger. The profound implications of the word and the language were just beginning to register with her after the tension of their encounter.
“We move well,” Stilgar said. “With Shai-hulud’s favor, we’ll reach Cave of the Ridges before dawn.”
Jessica nodded, conserving her strength, sensing the terrible fatigue she held at bay by force of will … and, she admitted it: by the force of elation. Her mind focused on the value of this troop, seeing what was revealed here about the Fremen culture.
All of them, she thought, an entire culture trained to military order. What a priceless thing is hereforan outcast Duke!
***
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” —which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
—from “The Wisdom of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan
THEY APPROACHED Cave of the Ridges at dawnbreak, moving through a split in the basin wall so narrow they had to turn sideways to negotiate it. Jessica saw Stilgar detach guards in the thin dawnlight, saw them for a moment as they began their scrambling climb up the cliff.
Paul turned his head upward as he walked, seeing the tapestry of this planet cut im cross section where the narrow cleft gaped toward gray-blue sky.
Chani pulled at his robe to hurry him, said: “Quickly. It is already light.”
“The men who climbed above us, where are they going?” Paul whispered.
“The first daywatch,” she said. “Hurry now!”
A guard left outside, Paul thought. Wise. But it would’ve been wiser still for us to approach this place in separate bands. Less chance of losing the whole troop. He paused in the thought, realizing that this was guerrilla thinking, and he remembered his father’s fear that the Atreides might become a guerrilla house.
“Faster,” Chani whispered.
Paul sped his steps, hearing the swish of robes behind. And he thought of the words of the sirat from Yueh’s tiny O.C. Bible.
“Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind. ” He rolled the quotation in his mind.
They rounded a corner where the passage widened. Stilgar stood at one side motioning them into a low hole that opened at right angles.
“Quickly!” he hissed. “We’re like rabbits in a cage if a patrol catches us here.”
Paul bent for the opening, followed Chani into a cave illuminated by thin gray light from somewhere ahead.
“You can stand up,” she said.
He straightened, studied the place: a deep and wide area with domed ceiling that curved away just out of a man’s handreach. The troop spread out through shadows. Paul saw his mother come up on one side, saw her examine their companions. And he noted how she failed to blend with the Fremen even though her garb was identical. The way she moved —such a sense of power and grace.
“Find a place to rest and stay out of the way, child-man,” Chani said. “Here’s food.” She pressed two leaf-wrapped morsels into his hand. They reeked of spice.
Stilgar came up behind Jessica, called an order to a group on the left. “Get the doorseal in place and see to moisture security.” He turned to another Fremen: “Lemil, get glowglobes.” He took Jessica’s arm. “I wish to show you something, weirding woman.” He led her around a curve of rock toward the light source.
Jessica found herself looking out across the wide lip of another opening to the cave, an opening high in a cliff wall—looking out across another basin about ten or twelve kilometers wide. The basin was shielded by high rock walls. Sparse clumps of plant growth were scattered around it.
As she looked at the dawn-gray basin, the sun lifted over the far escarpment illuminating a biscuit-colored landscape of rocks and sand. And she noted how the sun of Arrakis appeared to leap over the horizon.
It’s because we want to hold it back, she thought. Night is safer than day. There came over her then a longing for a rainbow in this place that would never see