Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [151]
It was such a simple thing for her to do . . . but its effects would last for years. For the rest of his life. Mohiam envisioned the Baron pain-wracked, so obese he couldn’t even stand erect unassisted, screaming out in agony.
Finished, smug in the belief that he had shown the witch who was the more powerful, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen withdrew and stood up, frowning at her in disgust now. “Piter, get me a towel, so I can wipe the whore’s slime off of me.”
The Mentat scuttled out of the room, chuckling. The hall doors were opened again. Uniformed house guards marched in to watch as Mohiam regained the use of her muscles, bit by bit.
Baron Harkonnen admonished the Reverend Mother with a cruel smile. “Tell the Bene Gesserit never to annoy me again with their genetic schemes.”
She raised herself to one arm, then gradually gathered her torn clothes and climbed to her feet with nearly full coordination. Mohiam raised her chin proudly, but could not hide her humiliation. And the Baron could not hide his pleasure at watching her.
You think you have won, she thought. We shall see about that.
Satisfied with what she had done, and the inevitability of her terrible revenge, the Reverend Mother strode out of Harkonnen Keep. The Baron’s Burseg followed her for part of the way, then let her return alone and unescorted to the shuttle like a chastened dog. Other guards remained rigid and at attention, guarding the foot of the ramp.
Mohiam calmed herself as she approached the craft and finally allowed herself a slight smile. No matter what had occurred back there, she now carried another Harkonnen daughter inside her. And that, of course, was what the Bene Gesserit had wanted all along. . . .
How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream.
—STILGAR, Naib of Sietch Tabr
For Pardot Kynes, life would never be the same now that he had been accepted into the sietch.
His wedding day to Frieth approached, requiring that he spend hours on preparation and meditation, learning Fremen marriage rituals, especially the ahal, the ceremony of a woman choosing a mate—and Frieth had certainly been the initiator in this relationship. Many other fascinations distracted him, but he knew he could not make any mistakes in such a delicate matter.
For the sietch leaders, this was a grand occasion, more spectacular than any normal Fremen wedding. Never before had an outsider married one of their women, though Naib Heinar had heard of it happening occasionally in other sietches.
After the would-be assassin Uliet had sacrificed himself, the tale told throughout the sietch (and no doubt spread among other hidden Fremen communities) was that Uliet had received a true vision from God, that he had been directed in his actions. Old one-eyed Heinar, as well as sietch elders Jerath, Aliid, and Garnah, were suitably chagrined for having questioned the impassioned words of the Planetologist in the first place.
Though Heinar gravely offered to step down as Naib, bowing to the man he now believed to be a prophet from beyond the stars, Kynes had no interest in becoming the leader of the sietch. He had too much work to do—challenges on a scale grander than mere local politics. He was perfectly happy to be left alone to concentrate on his terraforming plan and study the data collected from instruments scattered all around the desert. He needed to understand the great sandy expanse and its subtleties before he could know precisely how to change things for the better.
The Fremen worked hard to comply with anything Kynes suggested, no matter how absurd it might seem. They believed everything he said now. So preoccupied was Kynes, however, that he barely noticed their devotion. If the Planetologist said he needed certain measurements, Fremen scrambled across the desert, setting up collection points in remote regions, reopening the botanical testing stations that had been long abandoned by the Imperium. Some devoted assistants even