"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.
She talks of hints, Paul thought. She doesn't really know anything. And he said: "Hint then."
"And be damned to me?" She smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.' "
He felt astonishment: she was talking about such elementary things as tension within meaning. Did she think his mother had taught him nothing at all?
"That's a hint?" he asked.
"We're not here to bandy words or quibble over their meaning," the old woman said. "The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows -- a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose."
Paul stared at her. She said purpose and he felt the word buffet him, reinfecting him with terrible purpose. He experienced a sudden anger at her: fatuous old witch with her mouth full of platitudes.
"You think I could be this Kwisatz Haderach," he said. "You talk about me, but you haven't said one thing about what we can do to help my father. I've heard you talking to my mother. You talk as though my father were dead. Well, he isn't!"
"If there were a thing to be done for him, we'd have done it," the old woman growled. "We may be able to salvage you. Doubtful, but possible. But for your father, nothing. When you've learned to accept that as a fact, you've learned a real Bene Gesserit lesson."
Paul saw how the words shook his mother. He glared at the old woman. How could she say such a thing about his father? What made her so sure? His mind seethed with resentment.
The Reverend Mother looked at Jessica. "You've been training him in the Way
-- I've seen the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules."
Jessica nodded.
"Now, I caution you," said the old woman, "to ignore the regular order of training. His own safety requires the Voice. He already has a good start in it, but we both know how much more he needs . . . and that desperately." She stepped close to Paul, stared down at him. "Goodbye, young human. I hope you make it.
But if you don't -- well, we shall yet succeed."
Once more she looked at Jessica. A flicker sign of understanding passed between them. Then the old woman swept from the room, her robes hissing, with not another backward glance. The room and its occupants already were shut from her thoughts.
But Jessica had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother's face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day.
= = = = = =
You have read that Muad'Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The dangers were too great. But Muad'Dib did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Gurney Halleck, the troubadour-warrior. You will sing some of Gurney's songs, as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old Mentat Master of Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah Emperor. There were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name
black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and -- of course -- the Duke Leto, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.
-from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan Thufir Hawat slipped into the training room of Castle Caladan, closed the door softly. He stood there a moment, feeling old and tired and storm-leathered.
His left leg ached where it had been slashed once in the service of the Old Duke.
Three generations of them now, he thought.
He stared across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through the skylights, saw the boy seated with back to the door, intent on papers and charts spread across an ell table.
How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door? Hawat cleared his throat.
Paul remained bent over his studies.
A cloud shadow passed over the skylights. Again, Hawat cleared his throat.
Paul straightened, spoke without turning: "I know. I'm sitting with my back to a door."
Hawat suppressed a smile, strode across the room.
Paul looked up at the grizzled old man who stopped at a corner of the table.
Hawat's eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.
"I heard you coming down the hall," Paul said. "And I heard you open the door."
"The sounds I make could be imitated."
"I'd know the difference."
He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-mother of his is giving him the deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that?
Maybe that's why they sent the old Proctor here -- to whip our dear Lady Jessica into line.
Hawat pulled up a chair across from Paul, sat down facing the door. He did it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck him as an odd place suddenly, a stranger-place with most of its hardware already gone off to Arrakis. A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.
There stand I, Hawat thought.
"Thufir, what're you thinking?" Paul asked.
Hawat looked at the boy. "I was thinking we'll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again."
