witch-spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?”
Paul looked down at his right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. Slowly, he willed the muscles to relax. She put some kind of hold on me, he thought. How?
“She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,” Paul said. “And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do.”
She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue.
“She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.”
“How’d she figure your father attracted men like Duncan and Gurney?” Hawat asked.
Paul shrugged. “Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears. And I said that’s what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life.”
Hawat chuckled. “How’d that sit with her?”
“I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy her.”
He seems to be getting over it, Hawat thought, but that old witch frightened him. Why did she do it?
“Thufir,” Paul said, “will Arrakis be as bad as she said?”
“Nothing could be that bad,” Hawat said and forced a smile. “Take those Fremen, for example, the renegade people of the desert. By first-approximation analysis, I can tell you there’re many, many more of them than the Imperium suspects. People live there, lad: a great many people, and….” Hawat put a sinewy finger beside his eye. “… they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion. You must not breathe a word of this, lad. I tell you only as your father’s helper.”
“My father has told me of Salusa Secundus,” Paul said. “Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Arrakis … perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it.”
“We do not really know of Salusa Secundus today,” Hawat said. “Only what it was like long ago … mostly. But what is known—you’re right on that score.”
“Will the Fremen help us?”
“It’s a possibility.” Hawat stood up. “I leave today for Arrakis. Meanwhile, you take care of yourself for an old man who’s fond of you, heh? Come around here like the good lad and sit facing the door. It’s not that I think there’s any danger in the castle; it’s just a habit I want you to form.”
Paul got to his feet, moved around the table. “You’re going today?”
“Today it is, and you’ll be following tomorrow. Next time we meet it’ll be on the soil of your new world.” He gripped Paul’s right arm at the bicep. “Keep your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge.” He released the arm, patted Paul’s shoulder, whirled and strode quickly to the door.
“Thufir!” Paul called.
Hawat turned, standing in the open doorway.
“Don’t sit with your back to any doors,” Paul said.
A grin spread across the seamed old face. “That I won’t, lad. Depend on it.” And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.
Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We’re leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?
The door across from Paul banged open and an ugly lump of a man lurched through it preceded by a handful of weapons.
“Well, Gurney Halleck,” Paul called, “are you the new weapons master?”
Halleck kicked the door shut with one heel. “You’d rather I came to play games, I know,” he said. He glanced around the room, noting that Hawat’s men already had been over it, checking, making it safe for a duke’s heir. The subtle code signs