comprehended the universe haunted him—accuracy matched with inaccuracy. He saw it in situ. Yet, when it was born, when it came into the pressures of reality, the now had its own life and grew with its own subtle differences. Terrible purpose remained. Race consciousness remained. And over all loomed the jihad, bloody and wild.
Chani joined him outside the tent, hugging her elbows, looking up at him from the corners of her eyes the way she did when she studied his mood.
“Tell me again about the waters of thy birthworld, Usul,” she said.
He saw that she was trying to distract him, ease his mind of tensions before the deadly test. It was growing lighter, and he noted that some of his Fedaykin were already striking their tents.
“I’d rather you told me about the sietch and about our son,” he said. “Does our Leto yet hold my mother in his palm?”
“It’s Alia he holds as well,” she said. “And he grows rapidly. He’ll be a big man.”
“What’s it like in the south?” he asked.
“When you ride the maker you’ll see for yourself,” she said.
“But I wish to see it first through your eyes.”
“It’s powerfully lonely,” she said.
He touched the nezhoni scarf at her forehead where it protruded from her stillsuit cap. “Why will you not talk about the sietch?”
“I have talked about it. The sietch is a lonely place without our men. It’s a place of work. We labor in the factories and the potting rooms. There are weapons to be made, poles to plant that we may forecast the weather, spice to collect for the bribes. There are dunes to be planted to make them grow and to anchor them. There are fabrics and rugs to make, fuel cells to charge. There are children to train that the tribe’s strength may never be lost.”
“Is nothing then pleasant in the sietch?” he asked.
“The children are pleasant. We observe the rites. We have sufficient food. Sometimes one of us may come north to be with her man. Life must go on.”
“My sister, Alia—is she accepted yet by the people?”
Chani turned toward him in the growing dawnlight. Her eyes bored into him. “It’s a thing to be discussed another time, beloved.”
“Let us discuss it now.”
“You should conserve your energies for the test,” she said.
He saw that he had touched something sensitive, hearing the withdrawal in her voice. “The unknown brings its own worries,” he said.
Presently she nodded, said, “There is yet… misunderstanding because of Alia’s strangeness. The women are fearful because a child little more than an infant talks… of things that only an adult should know. They do not understand the… change in the womb that made Alia… different.”
“There is trouble?” he asked. And he thought: I’ve seen visions of trouble over Alia.
Chani looked toward the growing line of the sunrise. “Some of the women banded to appeal to the Reverend Mother. They demanded she exorcise the demon in her daughter. They quoted the scripture: ‘Suffer not a witch to live among us.’ ”
“And what did my mother say to them?”
“She recited the law and sent the women away abashed. She said: ‘If Alia incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not forseeing and preventing the trouble.’ And she tried to explain how the change had worked on Alia in the womb. But the women were angry because they had been embarrassed. They went away muttering.”
There will be trouble because of Alia, he thought.
A crystal blowing of sand touched the exposed portions of his face, bringing the scent of the pre-spice mass. “Ei Sayal, the rain of sand that brings the morning,” he said.
He looked out across the gray light of the desert landscape, the landscape beyond pity, the sand that was form absorbed in itself. Dry lightning streaked a dark corner to the south—sign that a storm had built up its static charge there. The roll of thunder boomed long after.
“The voice that beautifies the land,” Chani said.
More of his men were stirring out of their tents. Guards were coming in from the rims. Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders.
“Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him … once … long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
The Fremen knew this rule instinctively.
The troop’s watermaster began the morning chanty, adding to it now the call for the rite to initiate a sandrider.
“The world is a carcass,” the man chanted, his voice