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he turned onto the base leg, brought the wings into optimum lift, settled gently
onto the bright orange pad atop the roof.
"Now," Alia said. "Speak."
"I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe."
She shook her head. "That's . . . that's . . . "
"A bitter pill," he said, watching the guards run toward them across the
roof, taking up their escort positions.
"Bitter nonsense!"
"The greatest palatinate earl and the lowliest stipendiary serf share the
same problem. You cannot hire a mentat or any other intellect to solve it for
you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No
servant -- or disciple -- can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue
bleeding for all to see."
She whirled away from him, realizing in the instant of action what this
betrayed about her own feelings. Without wile of voice or witch-wrought
trickery, he had reached into her psyche once more. How did he do this?
"What have you told him to do?" she whispered.
"I told him to judge, to impose order."
Alia stared out at the guard, marking how patiently they waited -- how
orderly. "To dispense justice," she murmured.
"Not that!" he snapped. "I suggested that he judge, no more, guided by one
principle, perhaps . . ."
"And that?"
"To keep his friends and destroy his enemies."
"To judge unjustly, then."
"What is justice? Two forces collide. Each may have the right in his own
sphere. And here's where an Emperor commands orderly solutions. Those collisions
he cannot prevent -- he solves."
"How?"
"In the simplest way: he decides."
"Keeping his friends and destroying his enemies."
"Isn't that stability? People want order, this kind or some other. They sit
in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the
rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly."
"I will suggest to my brother that you are much too dangerous and must be
destroyed," she said, turning to face him.
"A solution I've already suggested," he said.
"And that's why you are dangerous," she said, measuring out her words.
"You've mastered your passions."
"That is not why I'm dangerous." Before she could move, he leaned across,
gripped her chin in one hand, planted his lips on hers.
It was a gentle kiss, brief. He pulled away and she stared at him with a
shock leavened by glimpses of spasmodic grins on the faces of her guardsmen
still standing at orderly attention outside.
Alia put a finger to her lips. There'd been such a sense of familiarity
about that kiss. His lips had been flesh of a future she'd seen in some
prescient byway. Breast heaving, she said: "I should have you flayed."
"Because I'm dangerous?"
"Because you presume too much!"
"I presume nothing. I take nothing which is not first offered to me. Be glad
I did not take all that was offered." He opened his door, slid out. "Come along.
We've dallied too long on a fool's errand." He strode toward the entrance dome
beyond the pad.
Alia leaped out, ran to match his stride. "I'll tell him everything you've
said and everything you did," she said.
"Good." He held the door for her.
"He will order you executed," she said, slipping into the dome.
"Why? Because I took the kiss I wanted?" He followed her, his movement
forcing her back. The door slid closed behind him.
"The kiss you wanted!" Outrage filled her.
"All right, Alia. The kiss you wanted, then." He started to move around her
toward the drop field.
As though his movement had propelled her into heightened awareness, she
realized his candor -- the utter truthfulness of him. The kiss I wanted, she
told herself. True.
"Your truthfulness, that's what's dangerous," she said, following him.
"You return to the ways of wisdom," he said, not breaking his stride. "A
mentat could not've stated the matter more directly. Now: what is it you saw in
the desert?"
She grabbed his arm, forcing him to a halt. He'd done it again: shocked her
mind into sharpened awareness.
"I can't explain it," she said, "but I keep thinking of the Face Dancers.
Why is that?"
"That is why your brother sent you to the desert," he said, nodding. "Tell
him of this persistent thought."
"But why?" She shook her head. "Why Face Dancers?"
"There's a young woman dead out there," he said. "Perhaps no young woman is
reported missing among the Fremen."
= = = = = =
I think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward to
the root of this flesh and know myself as once I was. The root is there. Whether
any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in the future. But all things
a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may do it.
-The Ghola Speaks Alia's Commentary
As he lay immersed in the screaming odor of the spice, staring inward
through the oracular trance, Paul saw the moon become an elongated sphere. It
rolled and twisted, hissing -- the terrible hissing of a star being quenched in
an infinite sea -- down . . . down . . . down . . . like a ball thrown by a
child.
It was gone.
This moon had not set. Realization engulfed him. It was gone: no moon. The
earth quaked like an animal shaking its skin. Terror swept over him.
Paul jerked upright on his pallet, eyes wide open, staring. Part of him
looked outward, part inward. Outwardly, he saw the plasmeld grillwork which
vented his private room, and he knew he lay beside a stone-like abyss of his
Keep. Inwardly, he continued to see the moon fall.
Out! Out!
His grillwork of plasmeld looked onto the blazing light of noon across
Arrakeen. Inward -- there lay blackest night. A shower of sweet odors from a
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