The Winds of Dune (10 page)

Jessica fell into a particular category of offworlder: one that had adapted. Upon first arriving on Arrakis sixteen years earlier, she and her family had been softer than they’d realized, but time spent here had hardened them physically and mentally. While taking refuge from Harkonnen treachery, Jessica and her son had lived closer to the Fremen than virtually any other offworlder ever had. They had genuinely become part of the desert, harmonious with it.

Paul had consumed the Water of Life and nearly died, but in the process he gained unfettered access to the sheltered Fremen world. Thus, he not only became one of them, he became
them
in totality. Muad’Dib was not merely one individual; he encompassed all Fremen who had ever been born and ever would exist. He was their Messiah, the chosen one sent by Shai-Hulud to show them the path to eternal glory. And now, having walked off into the desert, he made the place even more sacred than before. He embodied the desert and its ways, and the winds would spread his spirit across all of human existence.

The funeral coach came to a stop in front of the viewing stand. The robed Fremen driver sat high on top. Showing no outward grief, Alia issued a command to her aides.

Attendants removed the black drapes from the coach, while others unhitched the pair of lions and led them away. The driver climbed down, bowed reverently to the idea of what it contained, then backed into the crowd.

A glow brightened inside the ornate coach, and its sides began to
open like the broad petals of a flower, revealing Muad’Dib’s urn inside on a plush purple platform. The urn began to glow as if from an inner sun, shining light onto the surrounding square in the thickening dusk. Some in the crowd fell to their knees attempting to prostrate themselves, but there was not much room for them to move.

“Even in death, my brother inspires his people,” Alia said to her mother. “ ‘Muad’Dib, the One Who Points the Way.’ ”

Jessica comforted herself with the knowledge that Paul would live forever in the memories, stories, and traditions passed on from generation to generation, from planet to planet. Still, deep inside, she could not accept that Paul was dead. He was too strong, too vibrant, too much a force of nature. But his own prescience, his own immensity of grief over what he’d done, had defeated him.

Here, at his funeral, Jessica saw distraught, sorrow-struck people everywhere . . . and felt uncomfortably hollow inside.

Billions and billions of people had died in the name of Muad’Dib and his Jihad. All told, he had sterilized
ninety planets
, wiping them clean of life. But she knew it had been necessary, made inevitable by his prescience. It had taken her a long time to understand, to
believe
, that Paul had truly known the righteousness of his actions. Jessica had doubted him, almost turned against him with tragic consequences . . . but she’d eventually learned the truth. She accepted the reality that her son was correct in his assertion that more of humanity would die if he had not taken such a difficult course.

Now, all of the deaths focused into one: Paul Orestes Atreides.

As the urn glowed, Jessica grappled with her feelings of love and loss: alien concepts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, but she didn’t care.
This is the funeral for my son.
She would gladly have let the people see her sadness. But she still could not openly grieve.

Jessica knew what would come next. Upon reaching its maximum brightness, the empty urn would rise on suspensors over the plaza and cast brilliant light over the enthralled crowds below, like the sun of Muad’Dib’s existence, until it rose out of sight into the night sky, symbolically ascending to heaven. Ostentatious, perhaps, but the crowds would view it with awe. It was as grand a show as Rheinvar the Magnificent himself would have put on, and Alia had planned the ceremony with a disturbing intensity and passion.

Now, as the bodiless urn continued to brighten, Jessica heard heavy engines and flapping ornithopter wings overhead. Looking up into the darkening sky that shimmered with artificial auroras and shooting stars, she saw a group of flying craft in a tight formation spewing clouds of dense vapors, coagulating gases that spilled and swirled like a congealing thundercloud. An unexpected addition to the show? With a sound like shattering rocks, a sharp thunderclap rang out above the crowd in the square, followed by a low, menacing rumble.

The people turned away from the funeral urn, sure that this was also part of the ceremony, but Jessica knew it had
not
been part of the plan. Alarmed, she whispered to Alia, “What is this?”

The young woman whirled, her eyes flashing. “Duncan, find out what’s going on.”

Before the ghola could move, a massive, scowling face appeared on the underside of the cloud, a projection that shone through the rolling knot of vapors. Jessica recognized the countenance instantly: Bronso of Ix.

From the fading rumble of thunder emerged a voice that boomed across the plaza. “Turn away from this circus sham and realize that Muad’Dib was just a man, not a god! He was the son of a Landsraad duke, and no more. Do not confuse him with God—for that dishonors both. Open your eyes to these foolish delusions.”

As the crowd howled in outrage, the glow from the funeral urn sputtered and went out, the suspensors failing so that the urn fizzled and crashed into the square. Mourners cursed the sky, demanding the blood of the man who had disrupted their sacred ceremony.

Overhead, the projected face broke into fragments as evening breezes dispersed the artificial thunderhead. The linked ’thopters simultaneously dropped out of the sky and crashed in multiple fireballs onto the rooftops of the sprawling government buildings that ringed the square.

The screaming crowd ran in all directions, trampling each other. Emergency sirens sounded, while police and medics rushed forth, shifting electronic containment barriers. Alia barked orders and sent zealous priests out into the crowd, ostensibly to calm them but also to search for any accomplices of Bronso.

On their observation stand, Jessica stood her ground. From her vantage, the injuries looked minimal, and she hoped there were no deaths.
She grudgingly admired Bronso’s cleverness, knowing he had used Ixian technology to produce his own show. Jessica knew full well, too, that he was skilled enough to elude capture. Bronso himself would be nowhere close to Arrakeen.

Water is life. To say that one drop of water is insignificant is to say that one life is insignificant. That is a thing I cannot accept.

—
The Stilgar Commentaries

T
o Alia, Bronso’s disruptive actions seemed more an insult directed at
her,
rather than mud thrown at the memory of Paul. She dispatched searchers and spies to locate the perpetrators, rounding up hundreds of suspects in due course.

While Jessica could not approve of what Bronso had done to ruin the solemn ceremony, she did not reject his underlying motives. In fact, she suspected that Paul himself would have disliked the ostentatious nature of the funeral itself. Though her son had voluntarily cultivated a demigod’s image, he had realized his mistake, had tried to alter course in any way he knew how.

On the morning after the funeral ceremony, Jessica found Stilgar at the edge of the Arrakeen Spaceport, supervising the removal of Fremen clan banners, flags of Landsraad Houses, and pennants from conquered worlds.

Jessica tilted her head back to watch a descending water-ship appear like a bright spot of reflected sunlight high above, dropping in a rippling plume of exhaust and ionized air, flanked by armed military craft to defend the cargo. A crackle and boom split the sky with a familiar non-thunder sound as the decelerating ship braked against the atmosphere above the small landing area.

Other vessels had landed at the spaceport, the air rippling with heat around the hulls. Egress doors opened with a hiss of equalizing pressures. A steward checked the ramp and tromped down to hand documents to one of the spaceport administrators who wore the yellow robe of a Qizara. Fuel technicians rushed forward to hook charge linkages to the suspensor engines.

All around, more shuttles, cargo haulers, and frigates were landing, one of them with a bone-jarring shriek of maladjusted engines. Ground-cars whirred up to cargo doors; manual laborers lined up for their shifts and invoked the blessings of Muad’Dib before performing their tasks.

Jessica stood next to Stilgar, who kept his voice low, his gaze straight ahead at all the spaceport activity. “I wanted to attend a farewell ceremony for my friend Usul from Sietch Tabr. But that
funeral
was not a Fremen thing.” He gestured to the still-milling crowds, the work crews, the heavy equipment. Souvenir vendors still hawked their trinkets, some of them reducing their prices to get rid of leftover merchandise, others raising prices because such items were now more rare and meaningful.

“Your daughter wants to organize a water ceremony for Chani, too.” The stern and conservative Naib shook his head. “After seeing what the Regent arranged for Muad’Dib, I have my concerns that Chani will be honored properly, in the way that she and her tribe would have wished.”

“The situation has been out of control for some time, Stilgar. Paul created and encouraged it himself.”

“But
Chani
did not, Sayyadina. She was a member of my troop and the daughter of Liet, a Fremen—not a mere symbol, as Alia wants her to be. We Fremen do not have funerals.”

Jessica turned to him, narrowing her eyes. “Maybe it’s time to impose reality again. Chani’s water means more to the Fremen than to any other spectators. The flesh belongs to the person, the water to the tribe. No part of her belongs to an Imperial political show. A true Fremen would make sure that her water is not wasted.”

Stilgar’s expression darkened. “Who can oppose what the Regent has decided?”

“You can, and so can we. If we are careful. It’s what we are obligated to do.”

Stilgar arched his eyebrows and turned his leathery face toward her. “You ask me to defy the wishes of Alia?”

Jessica shrugged. “The water belongs to the tribe. And the
Fremen
are Chani’s tribe, not the entire Imperium. If we take Chani’s water, we can do the thing right. Let me deal with my daughter. There may be a way for us all to be satisfied. Right now, Alia is engrossed in her search for Bronso and any of his associates. Now is the time to take Chani’s water—for safekeeping.”

Water-sellers walked down the streets chanting their eerie calls. Beggars and pilgrims milled around the workers who removed funeral pennants from high posts. Jessica saw that the orange-garbed foremen were tearing the cloth into scraps and selling the swatches as souvenirs from Muad’Dib’s memorial. A spice lighter came down to the spaceport, filling the air with a loud roar, but Jessica and the Naib existed in a small universe of their own.

Stilgar looked at her with his blue-within-blue eyes. “I know how.”

At night, listening to the daily hordes of wailing mourners, seeing the pilgrims continue to swarm in from offworld after the death of Muad’Dib (and knowing the Spacing Guild was reaping great profits from each passage), Stilgar concluded that such shameful excesses were decidedly non-Fremen.

He had been a friend of Paul Atreides from the moment the young man took his sietch name of Usul. He’d seen Paul kill his first man—the hotheaded Jamis, who would have been forgotten by the tribe, except that dying at the right time and by the right hand had given him a certain historical immortality.