mystery, she thought. And she said: “You spoke of your Reverend Mother … and I’ve heard words of legend and prophecy.”
“It is said that a Bene Gesserit and her offspring hold the key to our future,” he said.
“Do you believe I am that one.”
She watched his face, thinking: The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings are times of such great peril.
“We do not know,” he said.
She nodded, thinking: He’s an honorable man. He wants a sign from me, but he’ll not tip fate by telling me the sign.
Jessica turned her head, stared down into the basin at the golden shadows, the purple shadows, the vibrations of dust-mote air across the lip of their cave. Her mind was filled suddenly with feline prudence. She knew the cant of the Missionaria Protectiva, knew how to adapt the techniques of legend and fear and hope to her emergency needs, but she sensed wild changes here … as though someone had been in among these Fremen and capitalized on the Missionaria Protectiva’s imprint.
Stilgar cleared his throat.
She sensed his impatience, knew that the day moved ahead and men waited to seal off this opening. This was a time for boldness on her part, and she realized what she needed: some dar al-hikman, some school of translation that would give her….
“Adab,” she whispered.
Her mind felt as though it had rolled over within her. She recognized the sensation with a quickening of pulse. Nothing in all the Bene Gesserit training carried such a signal of recognition. It could be only the adab, the demanding memory that comes upon you of itself. She gave herself up to it, allowing the words to flow from her.
“Ibn qirtaiba,” she said,“as far as the spot where the dust ends.” She stretched out an arm from her robe, seeing Stilgar’s eyes go wide. She heard a rustling of many robes in the background. “I see a … Fremen with the book of examples,” she intoned. “He reads to al-Lat, the sun whom he defied and subjugated. He reads to the Sadus of the Trial and this is what he reads:
“Mine enemies are like green blades eaten down
That did stand in the path of the tempest.
Hast thou not seen what our Lord did?
He sent the pestilence among them
That did lay schemes against us.
They are like birds scattered by the huntsman.
Their schemes are like pellets of poison
That every mouth rejects.”
A trembling passed through her. She dropped her arm.
Back to her from the inner cave’s shadows came a whispered response of many voices: “Their works have been overturned.”
“The fire of God mount over thy heart,” she said. And she thought: Now, it goes in the proper channel.
“The fire of God set alight,” came the response.
She nodded. “Thine enemies shall fall,” she said.
“Bi-la kaifa,” they answered.
In the sudden hush, Stilgar bowed to her. “Sayyadina,” he said. “If the Shai-hulud grant, then you may yet pass within to become a Reverend Mother.”
Pass within, she thought. An odd way of putting it. But the rest of it fitted into the cant well enough. And she felt a cynical bitterness at what she had done. Our Missionaria Protectiva seldom fails. A place was prepared for us in this wilderness. The prayer of the salat has carved out our hiding place. Now … I must play the part of Auliya, the Friend of God… Sayyadina to rogue peoples who’ve been so heavily imprinted with our Bene Gesserit soothsay they even call their chief priestesses Reverend Mothers.
Paul stood beside Chani in the shadows of the inner cave. He could still taste the morsel she had fed him—bird flesh and grain bound with spice honey and encased in a leaf. In tasting it he had realized he never before had eaten such a concentration of spice essence and there had been a moment of fear. He knew what this essence could do to him—the spice change that pushed his mind into prescient awareness.
“Bi-la kaifa,” Chani whispered.
He looked at her, seeing the awe with which the Fremen appeared to accept his mother’s words. Only the man called Jamis seemed to stand aloof from the ceremony, holding himself apart with arms folded across his breast.
“Duy yakha hin mange,” Chani whispered. “Duy punra hin mange. I have two eyes. I have two feet.”
And she stared at Paul with a look of wonder.
Paul took a deep breath, trying to still the tempest within him. His mother’s words had locked onto the working of the spice essence, and he had felt her voice rise and fall within