Dune Messiah (15 page)

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Authors: Frank Herbert

Tags: #Dune (Imaginary place), #Fantasy, #General, #Science Fiction, #Fiction

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“But our gifts have the kindest intent,” Edric protested.

“How kindly can you be?” Paul asked. “The ghola you gave us believes he was designed to destroy us.”

“Destroy you, Sire?” Edric asked, all bland attention. “Can one destroy a god?”

Stilgar, entering on the last words, stopped, glared at the guards. They were much farther from Paul than he liked. Angrily he motioned them closer.

“It’s all right, Stil,” Paul said, lifting a hand. “Just a friendly discussion. Why don’t you move the Ambassador’s tank over by the end of my divan?”

Stilgar, weighing the order, saw that it would put the Steersman’s tank between Paul and the hulking aide, much too close to Paul, but …

“It’s all right, Stil,” Paul repeated, and he gave the private hand-signal which made the order an imperative.

Moving with obvious reluctance, Stilgar pushed the tank closer to Paul. He didn’t like the feel of the container or the heavily perfumed smell of melange around it. He took up a position at the corner of the tank beneath the orbiting device through which the Steersman spoke.

“To kill a god,” Paul said. “That’s very interesting. But who says I’m a god?”

“Those who worship you,” Edric said, glancing pointedly at Stilgar.

“Is this what you believe?” Paul asked.

“What I believe is of no moment, Sire,” Edric said. “It seems to most observers, however, that you conspire to make a god of yourself. And one might ask if that is something any mortal can do … safely?”

Paul studied the Guildsman. Repellent creature, but perceptive. It was a question Paul had asked himself time and again. But he had seen enough alternate Timelines to know of worse possibilities than accepting godhead for himself. Much worse. These were not, however, the normal avenues for a Steersman to probe. Curious. Why had that question been asked? What could Edric hope to gain by such effrontery? Paul’s thoughts went
flick
(the association of Tleilaxu would be behind this move)—
flick
(the Jihad’s recent Sembou victory would bear on Edric’s action)—
flick
(various Bene Gesserit credos showed themselves here)—
flick
…

A process involving thousands of information bits poured flickering through his computational awareness. It required perhaps three seconds.

“Does a Steersman question the guidelines of prescience?” Paul asked, putting Edric on the weakest ground.

This disturbed the Steersman, but he covered well, coming up with what sounded like a long aphorism: “No man of intelligence questions the fact of prescience, Sire. Oracular vision has been known to men since most ancient times. It has a way of entangling us when we least suspect. Luckily, there are other forces in our universe.”

“Greater than prescience?” Paul asked, pressing him.

“If prescience alone existed and did everything, Sire, it would annihilate itself. Nothing but prescience? Where could it be applied except to its own degenerating movements?”

“There’s always the human situation,” Paul agreed.

“A precarious thing at best,” Edric said, “without confusing it by hallucinations.”

“Are my visions no more than hallucinations?” Paul asked, mock sadness in his voice. “Or do you imply that my worshippers hallucinate?”

Stilgar, sensing the mounting tensions, moved a step nearer Paul, fixed his attention on the Guildsman reclining in the tank.

“You twist my words, Sire,” Edric protested. An odd sense of violence lay suspended in the words.

Violence here?
Paul wondered.
They wouldn’t dare! Unless
(and he glanced at his guards)
the forces which protected him were to be used in replacing him.

“But you accuse me of conspiring to make a god of myself,” Paul said, pitching his voice that only Edric and Stilgar might hear. “Conspire?”

“A poor choice of words, perhaps, my Lord,” Edric said.

“But significant,” Paul said. “It says you expect the worst of me.” Edric arched his neck, stared sideways at Stilgar with a look of apprehension. “People always expect the worst of the rich and powerful, Sire. It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular.”

A tremor passed across Stilgar’s face.

Paul looked up at the movement, sensing the thoughts and angers whispering in Stilgar’s mind. How dared this Guildsman talk thus to Muad’dib?

“You’re not joking, of course,” Paul said.

“Joking, Sire?”

Paul grew aware of dryness in his mouth. He felt that there were too many people in this room, that the air he breathed had passed through too many lungs. The taint of melange from Edric’s tank felt threatening.

“Who might my accomplices be in such a conspiracy?” Paul asked presently. “Do you nominate the Qizarate?”

Edric’s shrug stirred the orange gas around his head. He no longer appeared concerned by Stilgar, although the Fremen continued to glare at him.

“Are you suggesting that my missionaries of the Holy Orders,
all of them
, are preaching subtle falsehood?” Paul insisted.

“It could be a question of self-interest and sincerity,” Edric said.

Stilgar put a hand to the crysknife beneath his robe.

Paul shook his head, said: “Then you accuse me of insincerity.”

“I’m not sure that
accuse
is the proper word, Sire.”

The boldness of this creature!
Paul thought. And he said: “Accused or not, you’re saying my bishops and I are no better than power-hungry brigands.”

“Power-hungry, Sire?” Again, Edric looked at Stilgar. “Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality … and fall.”

“M’Lord,” Stilgar growled, “you’ve had men executed for less!”

“Men, yes,” Paul agreed. “But this is a Guild Ambassador.”

“He accuses you of an unholy fraud!” Stilgar said.

“His thinking interests me, Stil,” Paul said. “Contain your anger and remain alert.”

“As Muad’dib commands.”

“Tell me, Steersman,” Paul said, “how could we maintain this hypothetical fraud over such enormous distances of space and time without the means to watch every missionary, to examine every nuance in every Qizarate priory and temple?”

“What is time to you?” Edric asked.

Stilgar frowned in obvious puzzlement. And he thought:
Muad’dib has often said he sees past the veils of time. What is the Guildsman really saying?

“Wouldn’t the structure of such a fraud begin to show holes?” Paul asked. “Significant disagreements, schisms … doubts, confessions of guilt—surely fraud could not suppress all these.”

“What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can,” Edric said.

“Are you testing the limits of my tolerance?” Paul asked.

“Do my arguments lack all merit?” Edric countered.

Does he want us to kill him?
Paul wondered.
Is Edric offering himself as a sacrifice?

“I prefer the cynical view,” Paul said, testing. “You obviously are trained in all the lying tricks of statecraft, the double meanings and the power words. Language is nothing more than a weapon to you and, thus, you test my armor.”

“The cynical view,” Edric said, a smile stretching his mouth. “And rulers are notoriously cynical where religions are concerned. Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”

Paul felt himself go inwardly still, a profound caution gripping him. To whom was Edric speaking? Damnable clever words, heavy with manipulation leverages—that undertone of comfortable humor, the unspoken air of shared secrets: his manner said he and Paul were two sophisticates, men of a wider universe who understood things not granted common folk. With a feeling of shock, Paul realized that he had not been the main target for all this rhetoric. This affliction visited upon the court had been speaking for the benefit of others—speaking to Stilgar, to the household guards … perhaps even to the hulking aide.

“Religious
mana
was thrust upon me,” Paul said. “I did not seek it.” And he thought:
There! Let this man-fish think himself victorious in our battle of words!

“Then why have you not disavowed it, Sire?” Edric asked.

“Because of my sister Alia,” Paul said, watching Edric carefully.

“She is a goddess. Let me urge caution where Alia is concerned lest she strike you dead with her glance.”

A gloating smile began forming on Edric’s mouth, was replaced by a look of shock.

“I am deadly serious,” Paul said, watching the shock spread, seeing Stilgar nod.

In a bleak voice, Edric said: “You have mauled my confidence in you, Sire. And no doubt that was your intent.”

“Do not be certain you know my intent,” Paul said, and he signaled Stilgar that the audience was at an end.

To Stilgar’s questioning gesture asking if Edric were to be assassinated, Paul gave a negative hand-sign, amplified it with an imperative lest Stilgar take matters into his own hands.

Scytale, Edric’s aide, moved to the rear corner of the tank, nudged it toward the door. When he came opposite Paul, he stopped, turned that laughing gaze on Paul, said: “If my Lord permits?”

“Yes, what is it?” Paul asked, noting how Stilgar moved close in answer to the implied menace from this man.

“Some say,” Scytale said, “that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: ‘See, there He is. He makes us one.’ Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m’Lord.”

Scytale nodded pleasantly, gave Edric’s tank another nudge. They moved out of the salon, Edric supine in his tank, eyes closed. The Steersman appeared spent, all his nervous energies exhausted.

Paul stared after the shambling figure of Scytale, wondering at the man’s words. A peculiar fellow, that Scytale, he thought. While he was speaking, he had radiated a feeling of many people—as though his entire genetic inheritance lay exposed on his skin.

“That was odd,” Stilgar said, speaking to no one in particular.

Paul arose from the divan as a guard closed the door behind Edric and the escort.

“Odd,” Stilgar repeated. A vein throbbed at his temple.

Paul dimmed the salon’s lights, moved to a window which opened onto an angled cliff of his Keep. Lights glittered far below—pigmy movement. A work gang moved down there bringing giant plasmeld blocks to repair a facade of Alia’s temple which had been damaged by a freak twisting of a sandblast wind.

“That was a foolish thing, Usul, inviting that creature into these chambers,” Stilgar said.

Usul,
Paul thought.
My sietch name. Stilgar reminds me that he ruled over me once, that he saved me from the desert.

“Why did you do it?” Stilgar asked, speaking from close behind Paul.

“Data,” Paul said. “I need more data.”

“Is it not dangerous to try meeting this threat
only
as a mentat?”

That was perceptive,
Paul thought.

Mentat computation remained finite. You couldn’t say something boundless within the boundaries of any language. Mentat abilities had their uses, though. He said as much now, daring Stilgar to refute his argument.

“There’s always something outside,” Stilgar said. “Some things best
kept
outside.”

“Or inside,” Paul said. And he accepted for a moment his own oracular /mentat summation. Outside, yes. And inside: here lay the true horror. How could he protect himself from himself? They certainly were setting him up to destroy himself, but this was a position hemmed in by even more terrifying possibilities.

His reverie was broken by the sound of rapid footsteps. The figure of Korba the Qizara surged through the doorway backlighted by the brilliant illumination in the hallways. He entered as though hurled by an unseen force and came to an almost immediate halt when he encountered the salon’s gloom. His hands appeared to be full of shigawire reels. They glittered in the light from the hall, strange little round jewels that were extinguished as a guardsman’s hand came into view, closed the door.

“Is that you, m’Lord?” Korba asked, peering into the shadows.

“What is it?” Stilgar asked.

“Stilgar?”

“We’re both here. What is it?”

“I’m disturbed by this reception for the Guildsman.”

“Disturbed?” Paul asked.

“The people say, m’Lord, that you honor our enemies.”

“Is that all?” Paul said. “Are those the reels I asked you to bring earlier?” He indicated the shigawire orbs in Korba’s hands.