Paul watched them move off into the shadows, leaving him alone. He felt abandoned.
The men who had fixed the curtain came up beside him.
"Come, Usul."
He allowed himself to be guided forward, to be pushed into a circle of people being formed around Stilgar, who stood beneath the glowglobe and beside a bundled, curving, and angular shape gathered beneath a robe on the rock floor.
The troop crouched down at a gesture from Stilgar, their robes hissing with the movement. Paul settled with them, watching Stilgar, noting the way the overhead globe made pits of his eyes and brightened the touch of green fabric at his neck. Paul shifted his attention to the robe-covered mound at Stilgar's feet, recognized the handle of a baliset protruding from the fabric.
"The spirit leaves the body's water when the first moon rises," Stilgar intoned. "Thus it is spoken. When we see the first moon rise this night, whom will it summon?"
"Jamis," the troop responded.
Stilgar turned full circle on one heel, passing his gaze across the ring of faces. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the hawk plane stooped upon us at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was Jamis pulled me to safety."
He bent over the pile beside him, lifted away the robe. "I take this robe as a friend of Jamis--leader's right." He draped the robe over a shoulder, straightening.
Now, Paul saw the contents of the mound exposed: the pale glistening gray of a stillsuit, a battered literjon, a kerchief with a small book in its center, the bladeless handle of a crysknife, an empty sheath, a folded pack, a paracompass, a distrans, a thumper, a pile of fist-sized metallic hooks, an assortment of what looked like small rocks within a fold of cloth, a clump of bundled feathers . . . and the baliset exposed beside the folded pack.
So Jamis played the baliset, Paul thought. The instrument reminded him of Gurney Halleck and all that was lost. Paul knew with his memory of the future in the past that some chance-lines could produce a meeting with Halleck, but the reunions were few and shadowed. They puzzled him. The uncertainty factor touched him with wonder. Does it mean that something I will do . . . that I may do, could destroy Gurney . . . or bring him back to life . . . or . . .
Paul swallowed, shook his head.
Again, Stilgar bent over the mound.
"For Jamis' woman and for the guards," he said. The small rocks and the book were taken into the folds of his robe.
"Leader's right," the troop intoned.
"The marker for Jamis' coffee service," Stilgar said, and he lifted a flat disc of green metal. "That it shall be given to Usul in suitable ceremony when we return to the sietch."
"Leader's right," the troop intoned.
Lastly, he took the crysknife handle and stood with it.
"For the funeral plain," he said.
"For the funeral plain," the troop responded.
At her place in the circle across from Paul, Jessica nodded, recognizing the ancient source of the rite, and she thought: The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture--it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead. She looked across at Paul, wondering: Will he see it? Will he know what to do?
"We are friends of Jamis," Stilgar said. "We are not wailing for our dead like a pack of garvarg."
A gray-bearded man to Paul's left stood up. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. He crossed to the mound, lifted the distrans. "When our water went below minim at the siege at Two Birds, Jamis shared." The man returned to his place in the circle.
Am I supposed to say I was a friend of Jamis? Paul wondered. Do they expect me to take something from that pile? He saw faces turn toward him, turn away.
They do expect it!
Another man across from Paul arose, went to the pack and removed the paracompass. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the patrol caught us at Bight-of-the-Cliff and I was wounded, Jamis drew them off so the wounded could be saved." He returned to his place in the circle.
Again, the faces turned toward Paul, and he saw the expectancy in them, lowered his eyes. An elbow nudged him and a voice hissed: "Would you bring the destruction on us?"
How can I say I was his friend? Paul wondered.
Another figure arose from the circle opposite Paul and, as the hooded face came into the light, he recognized his mother. She removed a kerchief from the mount. "I was a friend of Jamis," she said. "When the spirit of spirits within him saw the needs of truth, that spirit withdrew and spared my son." She returned to her place.
And Paul recalled the scorn in his mother's voice as she had confronted him after the fight. "How does it f eel to be a killer?"
Again, he saw the faces turned toward him, felt the anger and fear in the troop. A passage his mother had once filmbooked for him on "The Cult of the Dead" flickered through Paul's mind. He knew what he had to do.
Slowly, Paul got to his feet.
A sigh passed around the circle.
Paul felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the baliset. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.
"I was a friend of Jamis," Paul whispered.
He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Jamis taught me . . . that . . . when you kill . . . you pay for it. I wish I'd known Jamis better."
Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the circle, sank to the rock floor.
A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"
It was taken up around the ring: "Usul gives moisture to the dead!"
He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.
