Frank Herbert - Heretics of Dune

"Shall I tell him who you are, sir?"

"Don't you think he already knows?"

"That would seem likely, sir, but still..."

"Caution where caution belongs," Teg said. "Bring on the food."

Delnay's interest was fully aroused long before the waiter relayed Teg's invitation. The professor's first words as he seated himself across from Teg were: "That was the most remarkable gastronomic performance I have ever seen. Are you sure you can eat a dessert?"

"Two or three of them at least," Teg said.

"Astonishing!"

Teg sampled a spoonful of a honey-sweetened confection. He swallowed it, then: "This place is a jewel."

"I have kept it a careful secret," Delnay said. "Except for a few close friends, of course. To what do I owe the honor of your invitation?"

"Have you ever been... ah, marked by an Honored Matre?"

"Lords of perdition, no! I'm not important enough for that."

"I was hoping to ask you to risk your life, Delnay."

"In what way?" No hesitation. That was reassuring.

"There is a place in Ysai where my old soldiers meet. I want to go there and see as many of them as possible."

"Through the streets in full regalia the way you are now?"

"In any way you can arrange it."

Delnay put a finger to his lower lip and leaned back to stare at Teg. "You're not an easy figure to disguise, you know. However, there may be a way." He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes." He smiled. "You won't like it, I'm afraid."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Some padding and other alterations. We will pass you off as a Bordano overseer. You'll smell of the sewer, of course. And you'll have to carry it off that you don't notice."

"Why do you think that will succeed?" Teg asked.

"Oh, there's going to be a storm tonight. Regular thing this time of year. Laying down the moisture for next year's open crops. And filling the reservoirs for the heated fields, you know."

"I don't understand your reasoning, but when I've finished another of these confections, we'll go," Teg said.

"You'll like the place where we take refuge from the storm," Delnay said. "I'm mad, you know, to do this. But the proprietor here said I was to help you or never come here again."

It was an hour after dark when Delnay led him to the rendezvous point. Teg, dressed in leathers and affecting a limp, was forced to use much of his mental power to ignore his own odors. Delnay's friends had plastered Teg with sewage and then hosed him off. The forced-air drying brought back most of the effluent aromas.

A remote-reading weather station at the door of the meeting place told Teg it had dropped fifteen degrees outside in the preceding hour. Delnay preceded him and hurried away into a crowded room where there was much noise and the sound of clinking glassware. Teg paused to study the doorside station. The wind was gusting to thirty klicks, he saw. Barometric pressure down. He looked at the sign above the station:

"A service to our customers."

Presumably, a service to the bar as well. Departing customers might well take one look at these readings and return to the warmth and camaraderie behind them.

In a large fireplace with inglenook at the far end of the bar there was a real fire burning. Aromatic wood.

Delnay returned, wrinkled his nose at Teg's smell and led him around the edge of the crowd into a back room, then through this into a private bathroom. Teg's uniform - cleaned and pressed - was laid out over a chair there.

"I'll be in the inglenook when you come out," Delnay said.

"In full regalia, eh?" Teg asked.

"It's only dangerous out in the streets," Delnay said. He went back the way they had come.

Teg emerged presently and found his way to the inglenook through groups that turned suddenly silent as people recognized him. Murmurous comments swept through the room. "The old Bashar himself." "Oh, yes, it's Teg. Served with him, I did. Know that face and figure anywhere."

Customers had crowded into the atavistic warmth of the fireside. There was a rich smell of wet clothing and drink-fogged breaths there.

So the storm had driven this crowd into the bar? Teg looked at the battle-hardened military faces all around him, thinking that this was not a usual gathering, no matter what Delnay said. The people here knew one another, though, and had expected to meet one another here at this time.

Delnay was sitting on one of the benches in the inglenook, a glass containing an amber drink in his hand.

"You put out the word to meet us here," Teg said.

"Isn't that what you wanted, Bashar?"

"Who are you, Delnay?"

"I own a winter farm a few klicks south of here and I have some banker friends who will occasionally loan me a groundcar. If you want me to be more specific, I'm like the rest of the people in this room - someone who wants the Honored Matres off our necks."

A man behind Teg asked: "Is it true that you killed a hundred of them today, Bashar?"

Teg spoke dryly without turning. "The number is greatly exaggerated. Could I have a drink, please?"

From his greater height, Teg scanned the room while someone was getting him a glass. When it was thrust into his hand, it was, as he expected, the deep blue of Danian Marinete. These old soldiers knew his preferences.

The drinking activity in the room continued but at a more subdued pace. They were waiting for him to state his purpose.

Gregarious human nature got a natural boost on such a stormy night, Teg thought. Band together behind the fire in the mouth of the cave, fellow tribesmen! Nothing dangerous will get past us, especially when the beasts see our fire. How many other similar gatherings were there around Gammu on such a night? he wondered, sipping his drink. Bad weather could mask movements that the gathered companions did not want observed. The weather might also keep certain people inside who were otherwise not supposed to remain inside.

He recognized a few faces from his past-officers and ordinary soldiers - a mixed bag. For some of them, he had good memories: reliable people. Some of them would die tonight.

The noise level began to increase as people relaxed in his presence. No one pressed him for an explanation. They knew that about him, too. Teg set his own timetable.

The sounds of conversation and laughter were of a kind he knew must have accompanied such gatherings since the dawn times when humans clustered for mutual protection. Clinking of glassware, sudden bursts of laughter, a few quiet chuckles. Those would be the ones more conscious of their personal power. Quiet chuckles said you could be amused but you did not have to make a guffawing fool of yourself. Delnay was a quiet chuckler.

Teg glanced up and saw that the beamed ceiling had been built conventionally low. It made the enclosed space seem at once more extended and yet more intimate. Careful attention to human psychology here. It was a thing he had observed many places on this planet. It was a care to keep a damper on unwanted awareness. Make them feel comfortable and secure. They were not, of course, but don't let that get through to them.

For a few moments longer, Teg watched the drinks being distributed by the skilled waiting staff: dark local beers and some expensive imports. Scattered along the bar and on the softly illuminated tables were bowls containing crisp-fried local vegetables, heavily salted. Such an obvious move to heighten thirst apparently offended no one. It was merely expected in this trade. The beers would be heavily salted, too, of course. They always were. Brewers knew how to kick off the thirst response.

Some of the groups were getting louder. The drinks had begun to work their ancient magic. Bacchus was here! Teg knew that if this gathering were allowed to run its natural course, the room would reach a crescendo later in the night and then gradually, very gradually, the noise level would subside. Someone would go look at the doorside weather station. Depending on what that one saw, the place might wind down immediately or continue at the more subdued pace for some time. He realized then that somewhere behind the bar there would be a way to distort the weather station's readouts. This bar would not overlook such a way of extending its trade.

Get 'em inside and keep 'em here by any means they don't find objectionable.

The people behind this institution would fall in with the Honored Matres and not blink an eye.

Teg put his drink aside and called out: "May I have your attention, please?"

Silence.

Even the waiting staff stopped in what they were doing.

"Some of you guard the doors," Teg said. "No one goes in or out until I give the order. Those back doors, too, if you please."

When this had been sorted out, he stared carefully around the room, picking the ones his doubled vision and old military experience told him could be most trusted. What he had to do now had become quite plain to him. Burzmali, Lucilla, and Duncan were out there at the edge of his new vision, their needs easily seen.

"I presume you can get your hands on weapons rather quickly," he said.

"We came prepared, Bashar!" Someone out in the room shouted. Teg heard the drink in that voice but also the old adrenaline pumping that would be so dear to these people.

"We are going to capture a no-ship," Teg said.

That grabbed them. No other artifact of civilization was as closely guarded. These ships came to the landing fields and other places and they left. Their armored surfaces bristled with weapons. Crews were on constant alert in vulnerable locations. Trickery might succeed; open assault stood little chance. But here in this room Teg had reached a new awareness, driven by necessity and the wild genes in his Atreides ancestry. The positions of the no-ships on and around Gammu were visible to him. Bright dots occupied his inner vision and, like threads leading from one bauble to another, his doubled vision saw the way through this maze.

Oh, but I do not want to go, he thought.

The thing driving him would not be denied.

"Specifically, we are going to capture a no-ship from the Scattering," he said. "They have some of the best. You, you and you and you." He pointed, singling out individuals. "You will stay here and see that no one leaves or communicates with anyone outside of this establishment. I think you will be attacked. Hold out as long as you can. The rest of you, get your weapons and let's go."

***

Justice? Who asks for justice. We make our own justice. We make it here on Arrakis - win or die. Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.

The no-ship came in low over the Rakian sands. Its passage stirred up dusty whirlwinds that drifted around it as it settled in a crunching disturbance of the dunes. The silvered yellow sun was sinking into a horizon disturbed by the heat devils of a long hot day. The no-ship sat there creaking, a glistening steely ball whose presence could be detected by the eyes and ears but not by any prescient or long-range instrument. Teg's doubled vision made him confident that no unwanted eyes saw his arrival.

"I want the armored 'thopters and cars out there in no more than ten minutes," he said.

People stirred into action behind him.

"Are you certain they're here, Bashar?" The voice was that of a drinking companion from the Gammu bar, a trusted officer from Renditai whose mood no longer was that of someone recapturing the thrills of his youth. This one had seen old friends die in the battle on Gammu. As with most of the others who survived to come here, he had left a family whose fate he did not know. There was a touch of bitterness in his voice, as though he were trying to convince himself that he had been tricked into this venture.

"They will be here soon," Teg said. "They will arrive riding on the back of a worm."

"How do you know that?"

"It was all arranged."

Teg closed his eyes. He did not need eyes to see the activity all around him. This was like so many command posts he had occupied: an oval room of instruments and people who operated them, officers waiting to obey.

"What is this place?" someone asked.

"Those rocks to the north of us," Teg said. "See them? They were a high cliff once. It was called Wind Trap. There was a Fremen sietch there, little more than a cave now. A few Rakian pioneers live in it."

"Fremen," someone whispered. "Gods! I want to see that worm coming. I never thought I'd ever see such a thing."

"Another one of your unexpected arrangements, eh?" asked the officer of the growing bitterness.

What would he say if I revealed my new abilities? Teg wondered. He might think I concealed purposes that would not bear close examination. And he would be right. That man is on the edge of a revelation. Would he remain loyal if his eyes were opened? Teg shook his head. The officer would have little choice. None of them had much choice except to fight and die.

It was true, Teg thought then, that the process of arranging conflicts involved the hoodwinking of large masses. How easy it was to fall into the attitude of the Honored Matres.

Muck!

The hoodwinking was not as difficult as some supposed. Most people wanted to be led. That officer back there had wanted it. There were deep tribal instincts (powerful unconscious motivations) to account for this. The natural reaction when you began to recognize how easily you were led was to look for scapegoats. That officer back there wanted a scapegoat now.

"Burzmali wants to see you," someone off to Teg's left said.

"Not now," Teg said.

Burzmali could wait. He would have his day of command soon enough. Meanwhile, he was a distraction. There would be time later for him to skirt dangerously near the role of scapegoat.

How easy it was to produce scapegoats and how readily they were accepted! This was especially true when the alternative was to find yourself either guilty or stupid or both. Teg wanted to say for all of those around him:

"Look to the hoodwinking! Then you'll know our true intentions!"

The communications officer on Teg's left said: "That Reverend Mother is with Burzmali now. She insists they be allowed in to see you."

"Tell Burzmali I want him to go back and stay with Duncan," Teg said. "And have him look in on Murbella, make sure she's secured. Lucilla can come in."

It had to be, Teg thought.

Lucilla was increasingly suspicious about the changes in him. Trust a Reverend Mother to see the difference.

Lucilla swept in, her robes swishing to accent her vehemence. She was angry but concealing it well.

"I demand an explanation, Miles!"

That was a good opening line, he thought. "Of what?" he said.

"Why didn't we just go in at the -"

"Because the Honored Matres and their Tleilaxu companions from the Scattering hold most of the Rakian centers."

"How... how do you..."

"They've killed Taraza, you know," he said.