"Tree," the children chanted. "Tree, grass, dune, wind, mountain, hill, fire, lightning, rock, rocks, dust, sand, heat, shelter, heat, full, winter, cold, empty, erosion, summer, cavern, day, tension, moon, night, caprock, sandtide, slope, planting, binder . . . "
"You conduct classes at a time like this?" Paul asked.
Her face went somber and grief edged her voice: "What Liet taught us, we cannot pause an instant in that. Liet who is dead must not be forgotten. It's the Chakobsa way."
She crossed the tunnel to the left, stepped up onto a ledge, parted gauzy orange hangings and stood aside: "Your yali is ready for you, Usul."
Paul hesitated before joining her on the ledge. He felt a sudden reluctance to be alone with this woman. It came to him that he was surrounded by a way of life that could only be understood by postulating an ecology of ideas and values. He felt that this Fremen world was fishing for him, trying to snare him in its ways. And he knew what lay in that snare--the wild jihad, the religious war he felt he should avoid at any cost.
"This is your yali," Harah said. "Why do you hesitate?"
Paul nodded, joined her on the ledge. He lifted the hangings across from her, feeling metal fibers in the fabric, followed her into a short entrance way and then into a larger room, square, about six meters to a side--thick blue carpets on the floor, blue and green fabrics hiding the rock walls, glowglobes tuned to yellow overhead bobbing against draped yellow ceiling fabrics.
The effect was that of an ancient tent.
Harah stood in front of him, left hand on hip, her eyes studying his face.
"The children are with a friend," she said. "They will present themselves later."
Paul masked his unease beneath a quick scanning of the room. Thin hangings to the right, he saw, partly concealed a larger room with cushions piled around
the walls. He felt a soft breeze from an air duct, saw the outlet cunningly hidden in a pattern of hangings directly ahead of him.
"Do you wish me to help you remove your stillsuit?" Harah asked.
"No . . . thank you."
"Shall I bring food?"
"Yes."
"There is a reclamation chamber off the other room." She gestured. "For your comfort and convenience when you're out of your stillsuit."
"You said we have to leave this sietch," Paul said. "Shouldn't we be packing or something?"
"It will be done in its time," she said. "The butchers have yet to penetrate to our region."
Still she hesitated, staring at him.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"You've not the eyes of the Ibad," she said. "It's strange but not entirely unattractive."
"Get the food," he said. "I'm hungry."
She smiled at him--a knowing, woman's smile that he found disquieting. "I am your servant," she said, and whirled away in one lithe motion, ducking behind a heavy wall hanging that revealed another passage before falling back into place.
Feeling angry with himself, Paul brushed through the thin hanging on the right and into the larger room. He stood there a moment caught by uncertainty.
And he wondered where Chani was . . . Chani who had just lost her father.
We're alike in that, he thought.
A wailing cry sounded from the outer corridors, its volume muffled by the intervening hangings. It was repeated, a bit more distant. And again. Paul realized someone was calling the time. He focused on the fact that he had seen no clocks.
The faint smell of burning creosote bush came to his nostrils, riding on the omnipresent stink of the sietch. Paul saw that he had already suppressed the odorous assault on his senses.
And he wondered again about his mother, how the moving montage of the future would incorporate her . . . and the daughter she bore. Mutable time-awareness danced around him. He shook his head sharply, focusing his attention on the evidences that spoke of profound depth and breadth in this Fremen culture that had swallowed them.
With its subtle oddities.
He had seen a thing about the caverns and this room, a thing that suggested far greater differences than anything he had yet encountered.
There was no sign of a poison snooper here, no indication of their use anywhere in the cave warren. Yet he could smell poisons in the sietch stench--
strong ones, common ones.
He heard a rustle of hangings, thought it was Harah returning with food, and turned to watch her. Instead, from beneath a displaced pattern of hangings, he saw two young boys--perhaps aged nine and ten--staring out at him with greedy eyes. Each wore a small kindjal-type of crysknife, rested a hand on the hilt.
And Paul recalled the stories of the Fremen--that their children fought as ferociously as the adults.
= = = = = =
The hands move, the lips move --
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
