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"Don&039;t put such fickle interpretations into me," he said
Alia pursed her lips Had shewhich looked down on a corner of the Teather there, the Arrakeen traders es like a pack of predators upon a herd of beasts He focused on a particular group of tradesmen, spice-fiber baskets over their arms, Fremen mercenaries a pace behind the
"They sell pieces of etched"Did you know that? They set the pieces out in the desert to be etched by stor patterns in the stone They call it a new art forht a piece of it last week - a golden tree with five tassels, lovely but very fragile"
"Don&039;t change the subject," Alia said
"I haven&039;t changed the subject," he said "It&039;s beautiful, but it&039;s not art Humans create art by their own violence, by their own volition" He put his right hand on the sill "The twins detest this city and I&039;m afraid I see their point"
"I fail to see the association," Alia said "The abduction of my mother is not a real abduction She will be safe as your captive"
"This city was built by the blind," he said "Did you know that Leto and Stilgar went out froone the whole night"
"It was reported to me," she said "These baubles from the sand - would you have me prohibit their sale?"
"That&039;d be bad for business," he said, turning "Do you knohat Stilgar said when I asked why they went out on the sand that way? He said Leto wished to commune with the spirit of Muad&039;Dib"
Alia felt the sudden coldness of panic, looked in the mirror a moht for such nonsense Was it a conspiracy?
Idaho put a hand over his eyes to blot out the sight of her, said: "Stilgar toldwith Leto because he still believes in Muad&039;Dib"
"Of course he does!"
Idaho chuckled, a hollow sound "He said he still believes because Muad&039;Dib was always for the little people"
"What did you say to that?" Alia asked, her voice betraying her fear
Idaho dropped his hand from his eyes "I said, &039;That must make you one of the little people&039; "
"Duncan! That&039;s a dangerous game Bait that Fremen Naib and you could awaken a beast to destroy us all"
"He still believes in Muad&039;Dib," Idaho said "That&039;s our protection"
"What was his reply?"
"He said he knew his own s that bite have longer teeth than Stilgar&039;s"
"I don&039;t understand you today, Duncan I ask you to do a very i vital to What is all of this ra?"
How petulant she sounded He turned back to the chambered"When I was trained as a mentat It is very difficult, Alia, to learn hoork your own mind You learn first that the e You can work your own then them, but the mind acts of itself Sometimes, when you have learned this about the s you do not want to see"
"And that&039;s why you tried to insult Stilgar?"
"Stilgar doesn&039;t know his own mind; he doesn&039;t let it run free"
"Except in the spice orgy"
"Not even there That&039;s what makes him a Naib To be a leader of men, he controls and limits his reactions He does what is expected of hiar and you can th of his teeth"
"That&039;s the Fremen way," she said "Well, Duncan, will you do it, or won&039;t you? She must be taken and it must be made to look like the work of House Corrino"
He reuments in his mentat way This abduction plan spoke of a coldness and a cruelty whose dimensions, thus revealed, shocked him Risk her own mother&039;s life for the reasons thus far produced? Alia was lying Perhaps the whisperings about Alia and Javid were true This thought produced an icy hardness in his stomach
"You&039;re the only one I can trust for this," Alia said
"I know that," he said
She took this as acceptance, smiled at herself in the mirror
"You know," Idaho said, "the mentat learns to look at every human as a series of relationships"
Alia did not respond She sat, caught in a personal lancing over his shoulder at her, saw the expression and shuddered It was as though she communed with voices heard only by herself
"Relationships," he whispered
And he thought: One onies as a snake casts off its skin - only to grow a new set and accept all of their liency Old governments can be traced like discarded molts I must carry out this scheme, but not in the way Alia commands
Presently Alia shook her shoulders, said: "Leto should not be going out like that in these tiar?"
"Not even with him"
She arose from her mirror, crossed to where Idaho stood beside the , put a hand on his arm
He repressed a shiver, reduced this reaction to ain her
He could not bring hie of her cosmetics, cleared his throat
She said: "I will be busy today exa?"
"Yes Nothing he does is what it seems And we must remember that his Bashar, Tyekanik, is an adept of chaumurky, chaumas, and all the other subtleties of royal assassination"
"The price of power," he said, pulling away from her "But we&039;re still mobile and Farad&039;n is not"
She studied his chiseled profile Sos of hisonly that freedoave life to a military power? Well, life on Arrakis had been too secure for too long Senses once whetted by oenerate when not used
"Yes," she said, "we still have the Freenerate into infantry That&039;d be foolish"
His tone annoyed her, and she said: "Farad&039;n will use any means to destroy us"
"Ahhh, that&039;s it," he said "That&039;s a form of initiative, a mobility which we didn&039;t have in the old days We had a code, the code of House Atreides We always paid our way and let the eneer holds, of course We&039;re equally mobile House Atreides and House Corrino"
"We abduct my mother to save her from harm as much as for any other reason," Alia said "We still live by the code!"
He looked down at her She knew the dangers of inciting a mentat to compute Didn&039;t she realize what he had computed? Yet he still loved her He brushed a hand across his eyes How youthful she looked The Lady Jessica was correct: Alia gave the appearance of not having aged a day in their years together She still possessed the soft features of her Bene Gesserit , hawklike And now so possessed of cruel calculation lurked behind those eyes
Idaho had served House Atreides for too ths as well as their weaknesses But this thing in Alia, this was new The Atreides ainst friends and allies, and not at all against Faround into the Atreides manner: support your own populace to the best of your ability; show them how much better they lived under the Atreides Demonstrate your love for your friends by the candor of your behavior with theh, was not Atreides He felt this with all of his body&039;s flesh and nerve structure He was a unit, indivisible, feeling this alien attitude in Alia
Abruptly his mentat sensorium clicked into full awareness and his mind leaped into the frozen trance where Time did not exist; only the conize what had happened to hiave himself up to the computation
Computation: A reflected Lady Jessica lived out a pseudo-life in Alia&039;s awareness He saw this as he saw the reflected pre-ghola Duncan Idaho which remained a constant in his oareness Alia had this awareness by being one of the pre-born He had it out of the Tleilaxu regeneration tanks Yet Alia denied that reflection, risked her mother&039;s life Therefore Alia was not in contact with that pseudo-Jessica within Therefore Alia was completely possessed by another pseudo-life to the exclusion of all others
Possessed!
Alien!
Abomination!
Mentat fashion, he accepted this, turned to other facets of his problem All of the Atreides were on this one planet Would House Corrino risk attack froh the review of those conventions which had ended primitive forms of warfare:
One - All planets were vulnerable to attack froe facilities were set up off-planet by every House Major Farad&039;n would know that the Atreides had not omitted this elementary precaution
Two - Force shields were a coainst projectiles and explosives of non-atomic type, the basic reason why hand-to-hand conflict had reentered huht have brought their Sardaukar back to a pre-Arrakeen edge, but they still could be no match for the abandoned ferocity of Freer froe technical class, but the effects of the Butlerian Jihad continued as a daical excesses Ixians, Tleilaxu, and a few scattered outer planets were the only possible threat in this regard, and they were planet-vulnerable to the combined wrath of the rest of the Imperium The Butlerian Jihad would not be undone Mechanized warfare required a large technical class The Atreides Ie technical class existed unwatched And the Empire remained safely feudalist, naturally, since that was the best social for over widely dispersed wild frontiers - new planets
Duncan felt his h e of ti at the conviction that House Corrino would not risk an illegal atomic attack, he did this in flash-computation, the main decisional pathway, but he was perfectly aware of the elements which went into this conviction: The Imperium commanded as many nuclear and allied weapons as all the Great Houses combined At least half the Great Houses would react without thinking if House Corrino broke the Convention The Atreides off-planet retaliation syste force, and no need to su Salusa Secundus and its allies would vanish in hot clouds House Corrino would not risk such a holocaust They were undoubtedly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of huence" ever be encountered
The coes, sharp relief There were no blurred between-places Alia chose abduction and terror because she had become alien, non-Atreides House Corrino was a threat, but not in the hich Alia argued in Council Alia wanted the Lady Jessica reence had seen what only now had become clear to him
Idaho shook hi in front of hi expression on her face
"Wouldn&039;t you rather the Lady Jessica were killed?" he asked
The alien-flash of her joy lay exposed before his eyes for a brief instant before being covered by false outrage "Duncan!"