Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [173]
“Paul.” Jessica’s voice was insistent. “Remember what I told you of the Sisterhood. Maybe you aren’t the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach that the thinking machines want, but you are still a Kwisatz Haderach. You know that, and your body knows it as well. Some of your powers are the same as those of a Reverend Mother. A Reverend Mother, Paul!”
But he found it too difficult to concentrate on her words, or to remember . . . As he spiraled deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, her voice faded, and he could not hear or feel his heartbeat anymore. What did his mother mean?
If Jessica now remembered her past life, she also remembered the Spice Agony. Any Reverend Mother had the innate ability to shift her biochemistry, to manipulate and alter molecules within her bloodstream. It was how they selected their pregnancies, how they transmuted the poisonous Water of Life. That was why the Honored Matres had searched so furiously to find Chapterhouse—because only Reverend Mothers had the physical ability to fight off the terrible machine plagues.
Why did his mother want him to remember that?
Trapped inside the darkness, Paul felt the emptiness of his body. Completely bled out. Silent.
On Arrakis so long ago, he had undergone his own version of the Agony, the first male ever to do so successfully. For weeks he had lain in a coma, declared dead by the Fremen, while Jessica insisted on keeping him alive. He had seen that stygian place where women could not go, and he had drawn strength from it.
Yes, Paul had that ability within him now. He was a male Bene Gesserit. He could still control his body, every cell, every muscle fiber. At last, he knew what his mother had been trying to tell him.
The pain of dying and the crisis of survival gave him the lever he needed. He stood upon his pain as a fulcrum and used it to pry open his life, his first existence—the memories of Paul Atreides, of Muad’Dib, of himself as Emperor and later as the Preacher. He followed that flood backward to his childhood and his early training with Duncan Idaho on Caladan, including how he had almost been killed as a pawn in the War of Assassins that had ensnared his father.
He remembered his family’s arrival on Arrakis, a place Duke Leto knew to be a Harkonnen trap. The memories rushed past Paul: the destruction of Arrakeen, his flight into the desert with his mother, the death of the first Duncan Idaho . . . meeting the Fremen, his knife fight with Jamis, the first man he had ever killed . . . his first worm ride, creating the Fedaykin force, attacking the Harkonnens.
His past accelerated as it flowed through his mind—overthrowing Shaddam and his empire, launching his own jihad, fighting to keep the human race stable without traveling down that dark path. But he had not been able to escape political struggles, assassination attempts, the exiled Emperor Shaddam’s bid for power and the pretender daughter of Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring . . . then Count Fenring himself had tried to kill Paul—
His body no longer felt empty, but full of experiences and great knowledge, full of abilities. He remembered his love for Chani and his sham marriage to Princess Irulan, as well as the first Duncan ghola named Hayt, and Chani dying while giving birth to the twins, Leto II and Ghanima. Even now, the pain of losing Chani seemed far greater than the pain he presently suffered. If he died now, in her arms, he would inflict that same anguish upon her.
He remembered wandering off into the desert, blinded from prescience . . . and surviving. Becoming the Preacher. Dying in a dusty street surrounded by a mob.
He was now everything he had once been: Paul Atreides and all the different guises he had worn, every mask of legend, every power and weakness. Most important of all, he now had the abilities of a Reverend Mother, the infinitesimal physical control. Like a beacon in the darkness, his mother had enabled him to see.
Between his last heartbeats, he searched within himself