One robed figure remained in Paul's path: Shishakli, a squad leader of the Fedaykin, only his slope-lidded eyes visible between stillsuit cap and mask.
Shishakli presented two thin, whiplike shafts as Paul approached. The shafts were about a meter and a half long with glistening plasteel hoods at one end, roughened at the other end for a firm grip.
Paul accepted them both in his left hand as required by the ritual.
"They are my own hooks," Shishakli said in a husky voice. "They never have failed."
Paul nodded, maintaining the necessary silence, moved past the man and up the dune slope. At the crest, he glanced back, saw the troop scattering like a flight of insects, their robes fluttering. He stood alone now on the sandy ridge with only the horizon in front of him, the flat and unmoving horizon. This was a good dune Stilgar had chosen, higher than its companions for the viewpoint vantage.
Stooping, Paul planted the thumper deep into the windward face where the sand was compacted and would give maximum transmission to the drumming. Then he hesitated, reviewing the lessons, reviewing the life-and-death necessities that faced him.
When he threw the latch, the thumper would begin its summons. Across the sand, a giant worm -- a maker -- would hear and come to the drumming. With the whiplike hook-staffs, Paul knew, he could mount the maker's high curving back.
For as long as a forward edge of a worm's ring segment was held open by a hook, open to admit abrasive sand into the more sensitive interior, the creature would not retreat beneath the desert. It would, in fact, roll its gigantic body to bring the opened segment as far away from the desert surface as possible.
I am a sandrider, Paul told himself.
He glanced down at the hooks in his left hand, thinking that he had only to shift those hooks down the curve of a maker's immense side to make the creature roll and turn, guiding it where he willed. He had seen it done. He had been helped up the side of a worm for a short ride in training. The captive worm could be ridden until it lay exhausted and quiescent upon the desert surface and a new maker must be summoned.
Once he was past this test, Paul knew, he was qualified to make the twenty-thumper journey into the southland -- to rest and restore himself -- into the south where the women and the families had been hidden from the pogrom among the new palmaries and sietch warrens.
He lifted his head and looked to the south, reminding himself that the maker summoned wild from the erg was an unknown quantity, and the one who summoned it was equally unknown to this test.
"You must gauge the approaching maker carefully," Stilgar had explained.
"You must stand close enough that you can mount it as it passes, yet not so close that it engulfs you."
With abrupt decision, Paul released the thumper's latch. The clapper began revolving and the summons drummed through the sand, a measured "lump . . . lump
. . . lump . . . "
He straightened, scanning the horizon, remembering Stilgar's words: "Judge the line of approach carefully. Remember, a worm seldom makes an unseen approach to a thumper. Listen all the same. You may often hear it before you see it."
And Chani's words of caution, whispered at night when her fear for him overcame her, filled his mind: "When you take your stand along the maker's path, you must remain utterly still. You must think like a patch of sand. Hide beneath your cloak and become a little dune in your very essence."
Slowly, he scanned the horizon, listening, watching for the signs he had been taught.
It came from the southeast, a distant hissing, a sand-whisper. Presently he saw the faraway outline of the creature's track against the dawnlight and realized he had never before seen a maker this large, never heard of one this size. It appeared to be more than half a league long, and the rise of the sandwave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain.
This is nothing I have seen by vision or in life, Paul cautioned himself. He hurried across the path of the thing to take his stand, caught up entirely by the rushing needs of this moment.
= = = = = =
"Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?"
-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
A thought came unbidden to Jessica's mind: Paul will be undergoing his sandrider test at any moment now. They try to conceal this fact from me, but it's obvious.
And Chani has gone on some mysterious errand.
Jessica sat in her resting chamber, catching a moment of quiet between the night's classes. It was a pleasant chamber, but not as large as the one she had enjoyed in Sietch Tabr before their flight from the pogrom. Still, this place had thick rugs on the floor, soft cushions, a low coffee table near at hand, multicolored hangings on the walls, and soft yellow glowglobes overhead. The room was permeated with the distinctive acrid furry odor of a Fremen sietch that she had come to associate with a sense of security.
Yet she knew she would never overcome a feeling of being in an alien place.
It was the harshness that the rugs and hangings attempted to conceal.
A faint tinkling-drumming-slapping penetrated to the resting chamber.
Jessica knew it for a birth celebration, probably Subiay's. Her time was near.
And Jessica knew she'd see the baby soon enough -- a blue-eyed cherub brought to the Reverend Mother for blessing. She knew also that her daughter, Alia, would be at the celebration and would report on it.
It was not yet time for the nightly prayer of parting. They wouldn't have started a birth celebration near the time of ceremony that mourned the slave raids of Poritrin, Bela Tegeuse, Rossak, and Harmonthep.
Jessica sighed. She knew she was trying to keep her thoughts off her son and the dangers he faced -- the pit traps with their poisoned barbs, the Harkonnen raids (although these were growing fewer as the Fremen took their toll of aircraft and raiders with the new weapons Paul had given them), and the natural dangers of the desert -- makers and thirst and dust chasms.
She thought of calling for coffee and with the thought came that ever-present awareness of paradox in the Fremen way of life: how well they lived in these sietch caverns compared to the graben pyons; yet, how much more they endured in the open hajr of the desert than anything the Harkonnen bondsmen endured.
A dark hand inserted itself through the hangings beside her, deposited a cup upon the table and withdrew. From the cup arose the aroma of spiced coffee.
An offering from the birth celebration, Jessica thought.
She took the coffee and sipped it, smiling at herself. In what other society of our universe, she asked herself, could a person of my station accept an
anonymous drink and quaff that drink without fear? I could alter any poison now before it did me harm, or course, but the donor doesn't realize this.
She drained the cup, feeling the energy and lift of its contents -- hot and delicious.
