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Again he focused on the sillyIt caht shred these sar with his fragile neutrality and take with him all of the tribes who remained loyal to Alia They&039;d all become colonial peoples Halleck had seen it happen before, knowing the bitter taste of it on his own ho the mannerisms of the city Fremen, the pattern of the suburbs, and the unmistakable ways of the rural sietch which rubbed off even on this slers&039; hideaway The rural districts were colonies of the urban centers They&039;d learned hoear a padded yoke, led into it by their greed if not their superstitions Even here, especially here, the people had the attitude of a subject population, not the attitude of free , evasive Any manifestation of authority was subject to resentar&039;s, their own Council

I can&039;t trust theht He could only use them and nurture their distrust of others It was sad Gone was the old give and take of free ins lost toopposition and rewarding assistance, shifting the I the major elements of her Imperial power The spies! Gods below, the spies she must have!

Halleck could almost see the deadly rhythm of movement and countermovement by which Alia hoped to keep her opposition off balance

If the Freht

The doorseal behind him crackled as it was opened A sietch attendant naourd-like body which dwindled into spindly legs whose ugliness was only accented by a stillsuit

"You have been accepted," Melides said

And Halleck heard the sly dissimulation in the man&039;s voice What that voice revealed told Halleck there was sanctuary here for only a limited time

Just until I can steal one of their &039;thopters, he thought

"My gratitude to your Council," he said And he thought of Es dead of someone&039;s treachery, would have slit the throat of this Melides on sight

Any path which narrows future possibilitiestheir way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities The narrowing viewpoint of the maze should appeal only to creatures with their noses buried in sand Sexually produced uniqueness and differences are the life-protection of the spices -The Spacing Guild Handbook

"Why do I not feel grief?" Alia directed the question at the ceiling of her small audience chamber, a room she could cross in ten paces one way and fifteen the other It had two tall and narros which looked out across the Arrakeen rooftops at the Shield Wall

It was almost noon The sun burned down into the pan upon which the city had been built

Alia lowered her gaze to Buer Agarves, the foruards Agarves had brought the news that Javid and Idaho were dead A uards had co that they already knew Agarves&039;s e

Bad news traveled fast on Arrakis

He was a sarves, with a round face for a Fremen, almost infantile in its roundness He was one of the new breed who had gone to water-fatness Alia saw hies: one with a serious face and opaque indigo eyes, a worried expression around the ly vulnerable She especially liked the thickness of his lips

Although it was not yet noon, Alia felt so in the shocked silence around her that spoke of sunset

Idaho should&039;ve died at sunset, she told herself

"How is it, Buer, that you&039;re the bearer of this news?" she asked, noting the watchful quickness which caarves tried to s, spoke in a hoarse voice hardly more than a whisper "I ith Javid, you recall? And when Stilgar sent me to you, he said for me to tell you that I carried his final obedience"

"Final obedience," she echoed "What&039;d he mean by that?"

"I don&039;t know, Lady Alia," he pleaded

"Explain to ain what you saw," she ordered, and she wondered at how cold her skin felt

"I saw" He bobbed his head nervously, looked at the floor in front of Alia "I saw the Holy Consort dead upon the floor of the central passage, and Javid lay dead nearby in a side passage The woar suar suer in sietch Modibo gave ar wanted me"

"And you saw my husband&039;s body there on the floor?"

He lance, returned his attention once"Yes, My Lady And Javid dead nearby Stilgar told me told me that the Holy Consort had slain Javid"

"And ar -"

"He said it to ar said he had done this He said the Holy Consort provoked hie," Alia repeated "Hoas that done?"

"He didn&039;t say No one said I asked and no one said"

"And that&039;s when you were sent toyou could do?"

Agarves wet his lips with his tongue, then: "Stilgar commanded, My Lady It was his sietch"

"I see And you always obeyed Stilgar"

"I always did My Lady, until he freed me from my bond"

"When you were sent to my service, you ht? Tell ar, your old Naib, would you do it?"

Hefirmness "If you commanded it, My Lady"

"I do coone?"

"Into the desert; that&039;s all I know, My Lady"

"How many men did he take?"

"Perhaps half the effectives"

"And Ghanima and Irulan with him!"

"Yes, My Lady Those who left are burdened with their woave everyone a choice - go with him or be freed of their bond Many chose to be freed They will select a new Naib"

"I&039;ll select their new Naib! And it&039;ll be you, Buer Agarves, on the day you bring arves could accept selection by battle It was a Fremen way He said: "As you comive you many &039;thopters for the search They&039;re needed elsewhere But you&039;ll have enough fighting ladly"

"I&039;ll get about it, then, My Lady"

"Wait!" She studied hi whom she could send to watch over this vulnerable infant He would need close watching until he&039;d proved himself Zia would knohom to send

"Am I not dismissed, My Lady?"

"You are not disth on your plans to take Stilgar" She put a hand to her face "I&039;ll not grieve until you&039;ve exacted e Give me a few minutes to compose myself" She lowered her hand "One of ave a subtle hand signal to one of her attendants, whispered to Shalus, her new Da him He sning the grief she did not feel, and fled to her private chambers There, in her bedroom, she slammed the door into its tracks, cursed and stamped her foot

Damn that Duncan! Why? Why? Why?

She sensed a deliberate provocation froar It said he knew about Javid The whole thing esture

Again she sta across the bedchaone over to the rebels and Ghani foot encountered a painful obstacle, descending onto ht a cry fro that she&039;d bruised her foot on a ht of it in her hand It was an old buckle, one of the silver-and-platinuinally by the Duke Leto Atreides I to his swordmaster, Duncan Idaho She&039;d seen Duncan wear it many tiers clutched convulsively on the buckle Idaho had left it here when when

Tears sprang fro Her riin within her skull, reaching out to her fingertips, to her toes She felt that she had become two people One looked upon these fleshly contortions with astonishht sub in her chest The tears flowed freely from her eyes now, and the Astonished One within her demanded querulously: "Who cries? Who is it that cries? Who is crying now?"

But nothing stopped the tears, and she felt the painfulness which flah her breast as itdemanded out of that profound astonishment: "Who cries? Who is that"

By these acts Leto II removed himself from the evolutionary succession He did it with a deliberate cutting action, saying: "To be independent is to be removed" Both twins saw beyond the needs oftheir distance froins But it was left to Leto II to do the audacious thing, recognizing that a real creation is independent of its creator He refused to reenact the evolutionary sequence, saying, "That, too, takes me farther and farther from humanity" He saw the implications in this: that there can be no truly closed systems in life -The Holy Meta on the insect life which teepies, jays This had been a djedida, the last of the nens, built on a foundation of exposed basalt It was abandoned now Ghaniinal plantings of the abandoned sietch, detected ila woodpecker earlier, nesting in a ht of it as a sietch, but it was really a collection of loalls s to hold back the dunes It lay within the Tanzerouft, six hundred kiloe Without hu to melt back into the desert, its walls eroded by sandblast winds, its plants dying, its plantation area cracked by the burning sun

Yet the sand beyond the shattered qanat re to the fact that the squat bulk of the windtrap still functioned

In the itives had sampled the protection of several such places made uninhabitable by the Desert Deh there was no denying the visible evidence of the qanat&039;s destruction

Occasionally they had word froh encounters with rebel spice-hunters A few &039;thopters - so Stilgar, but Arrakis was large and its desert was friendly to the fugitives Reportedly there was a search-and-destroy force charged with finding Stilgar&039;s band, but the force which was led by the forarves had other duties and often returned to Arrakeen

The rebels said there was little fighting between their men and the troops of Alia Random depredations of the Desert Demon made Home Guard duty the first concern of Alia and the Naibs Even the s the desert for Stilgar, wanting the price on his head

Stilgar had brought his band into the djedida just before dark the previous day, following the unerring moisture sense of his old Fremen nose He&039;d promised they would head south for the palh he carried a price on his head which once would have bought a planet, Stilgar seemed the happiest and most carefree of men