Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [174]
Although in the preceding moments he had seemed to be fading, he now sharpened himself and became part of his own heart, which was no longer beating. He saw where Paolo’s blade had slashed open his right ventricle, letting blood spill out of the chamber. His aorta had been nicked, but there was no more blood for it to carry.
Paul brought the cells together and sealed them. Then, droplet by droplet, he began to draw his own blood back from the cavities of his body where it had spilled, and reabsorbed it into his tissues. He literally pulled life back into himself.
PAUL DIDN’T KNOW how long his trance lasted. It seemed as infinite as the death coma caused by touching just a drop of the poisonous Water of Life to his tongue. He became suddenly aware of Chani’s grip again. Her hand was warm, and he felt his own flesh, no longer cold and shuddering.
“Usul!” He could hear Chani’s faint whisper and detected the disbelief in her tone. “Jessica, something’s changed!”
“He is doing what he needs to do.”
When he finally summoned the strength to flutter his eyelids, Paul Muad’Dib Atreides rejoined the living, bringing with him both his old life and his new. In addition to those memories and abilities, he returned with a fantastic, even greater revelation. . . .
Just then, a flushed and bloodied Duncan Idaho burst into the great cathedral hall, knocking sentinel robots aside. Erasmus casually gestured to allow the man to enter. Duncan’s eyes went wide when he saw the bleeding Paul propped up by his mother and Chani. Dr. Yueh looked astonished at the miracle before him. Duncan ran toward them.
Trying to pull together his thoughts, Paul placed the tableau around him in the context of his internal knowledge. He had learned much by dying the first time, coming back as a ghola, and nearly dying again. He had always had a phenomenal gift for prescience. Now he knew even more.
In spite of his miraculous survival and rebirth, he still was not the perfect Kwisatz Haderach, and clearly Paolo was not, either. As Paul’s vision cleared, he focused on a realization that none of them had seen—not Omnius, Erasmus, Sheeana, nor any of the gholas.
“Duncan,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Duncan, it’s you!”
After hesitating for a moment, his old friend came closer, this loyal Atreides fighter who had been through the ghola process more times than any other individual in history.
“You’re the one they’ve been looking for, Duncan. It’s you.”
Even prescience has its limits. No one will ever know all the things that might have been.
—REVEREND MOTHER DARWI ODRADE
With her arm around his shoulders, Chani rocked Paul, as she shuddered with joy and relief. Fremen prohibitions were so much a part of her that even after seeing his mortal wound and watching him come within a heartbeat of dying in her arms, she still had not shed a tear.
In the machine cathedral, Duncan wrestled with the revelation that the pale and bloodied Paul had given him. “I . . . am the Kwisatz Haderach?”
Paul nodded weakly. “The final one. The perfect one. The one they were looking for.”
The old-man manifestation of Omnius gave the robed form of the independent robot an accusing look. “If this claim is correct, you were in error, Erasmus. You did not allow for the humans to twist fate yet again. You said your predictive calculations were accurate.”
The robot remained aloof, even smug. “Only your interpretation of my calculations was flawed. The final Kwisatz Haderach was indeed aboard the no-ship, as I said all along. You drew the obvious conclusion that the one we sought must be Paul Atreides. When the Face Dancer found the bloody knife carrying the cells of Muad’Dib, you falsely reinforced your own conclusion.”
Duncan’s mind wanted to reject what he was hearing. Even if he truly was the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, what was