All paths lead into darkness."
= = = = = =
And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
"Will you look at that thing!" Stilgar whispered.
Paul lay beside him in a slit of rock high on the Shield Wall rim, eye fixed to the collector of a Fremen telescope. The oil lens was focused on a starship lighter exposed by dawn in the basin below them. The tall eastern face of the
ship glistened in the flat light of the sun, but the shadow side still showed yellow portholes from glowglobes of the night. Beyond the ship, the city of Arrakeen lay cold and gleaming in the light of the northern sun.
It wasn't the lighter that excited Stilgar's awe, Paul knew, but the construction for which the lighter was only the centerpost. A single metal hutment, many stories tall, reached out in a thousand-meter circle from the base of the lighter -- a tent composed of interlocking metal leaves -- the temporary lodging place for five legions of Sardaukar and His Imperial Majesty, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.
From his position squatting at Paul's left, Gurney Halleck said: "I count nine levels to it. Must be quite a few Sardaukar in there."
"Five legions," Paul said.
"It grows light," Stilgar hissed. "We like it not, your exposing yourself, Muad'Dib. Let us go back into the rocks now."
"I'm perfectly safe here," Paul said.
"That ship mounts projectile weapons," Gurney said.
"They believe us protected by shields," Paul said. "They wouldn't waste a shot on an unidentified trio even if they saw us."
Paul swung the telescope to scan the far wall of the basin, seeing the pockmarked cliffs, the slides that marked the tombs of so many of his father's troopers. And he had a momentary sense of the fitness of things that the shades of those men should look down on this moment. The Harkonnen forts and towns across the shielded lands lay in Fremen hands or cut away from their source like stalks severed from a plant and left to wither. Only this basin and its city remained to the enemy.
"They might try a sortie by 'thopter," Stilgar said. "If they see us."
"Let them," Paul said. "We've 'thopters to burn today . . . and we know a storm is coming."
He swung the telescope to the far side of the Arrakeen landing field now, to the Harkonnen frigates lined up there with a CHOAM Company banner waving gently from its staff on the ground beneath them. And he thought of the desperation that had forced the Guild to permit these two groups to land while all the others were held in reserve. The Guild was like a man testing the sand with his toe to gauge its temperature before erecting a tent.
"Is there anything new to see from here?" Gurney asked. "We should be getting under cover. The storm is coming."
Paul returned his attention on the giant hutment. "They've even brought their women," he said. "And lackeys and servants. Ah-h-h, my dear Emperor, how confident you are."
"Men are coming up the secret way," Stilgar said. "It may be Otheym and Korba returning."
"All right, Stil," Paul said. "We'll go back."
But he took one final look around through the telescope -- studying the plain with its tall ships, the gleaming metal hutment, the silent city, the frigates of the Harkonnen mercenaries. Then he slid backward around a scarp of rock. His place at the telescope was taken by a Fedaykin guardsman.
Paul emerged into a shallow depression in the Shield Wall's surface. It was a place about thirty meters in diameter and some three meters deep, a natural feature of the rock that the Fremen had hidden beneath a translucent camouflage cover. Communications equipment was clustered around a hole in the wall to the right. Fedaykin guards deployed through the depression waited for Muad'Dib's command to attack.
Two men emerged from the hole by the communications equipment, spoke to the guards there.
Paul glanced at Stilgar, nodded in the direction of the two men. "Get their report, Stil."
Stilgar moved to obey.
Paul crouched with his back to the rock, stretching his muscles, straightened. He saw Stilgar sending the two men back into that dark hole in the rock, thought about the long climb down that narrow man-made tunnel to the floor of the basin.
Stilgar crossed to Paul.
"What was so important that they couldn't send a cielago with the message?"
Paul asked.
"They're saving their birds for the battle," Stilgar said. He glanced at the communications equipment, back to Paul. "Even with a tight beam, it is wrong to use those things, Muad'Dib. They can find you by taking a bearing on its emission."
"They'll soon be too busy to find me," Paul said. "What did the men report?"
"Our pet Sardaukar have been released near Old Gap low on the rim and are on their way to their master. The rocket launchers and other projectile weapons are in place. The people are deployed as you ordered. It was all routine."
Paul glanced across the shallow bowl, studying his men in the filtered light admitted by the camouflage cover. He felt time creeping like an insect working its way across an exposed rock.
"It'll take our Sardaukar a little time afoot before they can signal a troop carrier," Paul said.
"They are being watched?"
"They are being watched," Stilgar said.
Beside Paul, Gurney Halleck cleared his throat. "Hadn't we best be getting to a place of safety?"
"There is no such place," Paul said. "Is the weather report still favorable?"
