Farok stretched his neck upward, peering.
“There’s a way in,” Scytale explained. “The fact that most men—including, we may hope, the Emperor—believe otherwise … that’s to our advantage.” He rubbed his lips, feeling the strangeness of the visage he’d chosen. The musician’s silence bothered him. Did it mean Farok’s son was through transmitting? That had been the way of it, naturally: The message condensed and transmitted within the music. It had been impressed upon Scytale’s own neural system, there to be triggered at the proper moment by the distrans embedded in his adrenal cortex. If it was ended, he had become a container of unknown words. He was a vessel sloshing with data: every cell of the conspiracy here on Arrakis, every name, every contact phrase—all the vital information.
With this information, they could brave Arrakis, capture a sandworm, begin the culture of melange somewhere beyond Muad’dib’s writ. They could break the monopoly as they broke Muad’dib. They could do many things with this information.
“We have the woman here,” Farok said. “Do you wish to see her now?”
“I’ve seen her,” Scytale said. “I’ve studied her with care. Where is she?”
Farok snapped his fingers.
The youth took up his rebec, drew the bow across it. Semuta music wailed from the strings. As though drawn by the sound, a young woman in a blue robe emerged from a doorway behind the musician. Narcotic dullness filled her eyes which were the total blue of the Ibad. She was a Fremen, addicted to the spice, and now caught by an offworld vice. Her awareness lay deep within the semuta, lost somewhere and riding the ecstasy of the music.
“Otheym’s daughter,” Farok said. “My son gave her the narcotic in the hope of winning a woman of the People for himself despite his blindness. As you can see, his victory is empty. Semuta has taken what he hoped to gain.”
“Her father doesn’t know?” Scytale asked.
“She doesn’t even know,” Farok said. “My son supplies false memories with which she accounts to herself for her visits. She thinks herself in love with him. This is what her family believes. They are outraged because he is not a complete man, but they won’t interfere, of course.”
The music trailed away to silence.
At a gesture from the musician, the young woman seated herself beside him, bent close to listen as he murmured to her.
“What will you do with her?” Farok asked.
Once more, Scytale studied the courtyard. “Who else is in this house?” he asked.
“We are all here now,” Farok said. “You’ve not told me what you’ll do with the woman. It is my son who wishes to know.”
As though about to answer, Scytale extended his right arm. From the sleeve of his robe, a glistening needle darted, embedded itself in Farok’s neck. There was no outcry, no change of posture. Farok would be dead in a minute, but he sat unmoving, frozen by the dart’s poison.
Slowly, Scytale climbed to his feet, crossed to the blind musician. The youth was still murmuring to the young woman when the dart whipped into him.
Scytale took the young woman’s arm, urged her gently to her feet, shifted his own appearance before she looked at him. She came erect, focused on him.
“What is it, Farok?” she asked.
“My son is tired and must rest,” Scytale said. “Come. We’ll go out the back way.”
“We had such a nice talk,” she said. “I think I’ve convinced him to get Tleilaxu eyes. It’d make a man of him again.”
“Haven’t I said it many times?” Scytale asked, urging her into a rear chamber.
His voice, he noted with pride, matched his features precisely. It unmistakably was the voice of the old Fremen, who certainly was dead by this time.
Scytale sighed. It had been done with sympathy, he told himself, and the victims certainly had known their peril. Now, the young woman would have to be given her chance.
***
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
It was going to be a bad session, this meeting of the Imperial Council, Alia realized. She sensed contention gathering force, storing up energy—the way Irulan refused to look at Chani, Stilgar’s nervous shuffling of papers, the scowls Paul directed at Korba the Qizara.
She seated herself at the end of the golden council table so she could look out the balcony windows at the dusty light of the afternoon.
Korba, interrupted by her entrance, went on with something he’d been saying to Paul. “What I mean, m’Lord, is that there aren’t as many gods as once there were.”
Alia laughed, throwing her head back. The movement dropped the black hood of her aba robe. Her features lay exposed—blue-in-blue “spice eyes,” her mother’s oval face beneath a cap of bronze hair, small nose, mouth wide and generous.
Korba’s cheeks went almost the color of his orange robe. He glared at Alia, an angry gnome, bald and fuming.
“Do you know what’s being said about your brother?” he demanded.
“I know what’s being said about your Qizarate,” Alia countered. “You’re not divines, you’re god’s spies.”
Korba glanced at Paul for support, said: “We are sent by the writ of Muad’dib, that He shall know the truth of His people and they shall know the truth of Him.”
“Spies,” Alia said.
Korba pursed his lips in injured silence.
Paul looked at his sister, wondering why she provoked Korba. Abruptly, he saw that Alia had passed into womanhood, beautiful with the first blazing innocence of youth. He found himself surprised that he hadn’t noticed it until this moment. She was fifteen—almost sixteen, a Reverend Mother without motherhood, virgin priestess, object of fearful veneration for the superstitious masses—Alia of the Knife.
“This is not the time or place for your sister’s levity,” Irulan said.
Paul ignored her, nodded to Korba. “The square’s full of pilgrims. Go out and lead their prayer.”
“But they expect you, m’Lord,” Korba said.
“Put on your turban,” Paul said. “They’ll never know at this distance.”
Irulan smothered irritation at being ignored, watched Korba arise to obey. She’d had the sudden disquieting thought that Edric might not hide her actions from Alia. What do we really know of the sister? she wondered.
Chani, hands tightly clasped in her lap, glanced across the table at Stilgar, her uncle, Paul’s Minister of State. Did the old Fremen Naib ever long for the simpler life of his desert sietch? she wondered. Stilgar’s black hair, she noted, had begun to gray at the edges, but his eyes beneath heavy brows remained far-seeing. It was the eagle stare of the wild, and his beard still carried the catchtube indentation of life in a stillsuit.
Made nervous by Chani’s attention, Stilgar looked around the Council Chamber. His gaze fell on the balcony window and Korba standing outside. Korba raised outstretched arms for the benediction and a trick of the afternoon sun cast a red halo onto the window behind him. For a moment, Stilgar saw the Court Qizara as a figure crucified on a fiery wheel. Korba lowered his arms, destroyed the illusion, but Stilgar remained shaken by it. His thoughts went in angry frustration to the fawning supplicants waiting in the Audience Hall, and to the hateful pomp which surrounded Muad’dib’s throne.
Convening with the Emperor, one hoped for a fault in him, to find mistakes, Stilgar thought. He felt this might be sacrilege, but wanted it anyway.
Distant crowd murmuring entered the chamber as Korba returned. The balcony door thumped into its seals behind him, shutting off the sound.