Free Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Page A

he asked himself. What is more ridiculous than a Death Commando transformed into a priest?
    Stilgar tapped his papers. “If my liege permits,” he said. “These are matters urgent and dire.”
    “The Tupile Treaty?” Paul asked.
    “The Guild maintains that we must sign this treaty without knowing the precise location of the Tupile Entente,” Stilgar said. “They’ve some support from Landsraad delegates.”
    “What pressures have you brought to bear?” Irulan asked.
    “Those pressures which my Emperor has designated for this enterprise,” Stilgar said. The stiff formality of his reply contained all his disapproval of the Princess Consort.
    “My Lord and husband,” Irulan said, turning to Paul, forcing him to acknowledge her.
    Emphasizing the titular difference in front of Chani, Paul thought, is a weakness. In such moments, he shared Stilgar’s dislike for Irulan, but sympathy tempered his emotions. What was Irulan but a Bene Gesserit pawn?
    “Yes?” Paul said.
    Irulan stared at him. “If you withheld their melange …”
    Chani shook her head in dissent.
    “We tread with caution,” Paul said. “Tupile remains the place of sanctuary for defeated Great Houses. It symbolizes a last resort, a final place of safety for all our subjects. Exposing the sanctuary makes it vulnerable.”
    “If they can hide people they can hide other things,” Stilgar rumbled. “An army, perhaps, or the beginnings of melange culture which—”
    “You don’t back people into a corner,” Alia said. “Not if you want them to remain peaceful.” Ruefully, she saw that she’d been drawn into the contention which she’d foreseen.
    “So we’ve spent ten years of negotiation for nothing,” Irulan said.
    “None of my brother’s actions is for nothing,” Alia said.
    Irulan picked up a scribe, gripped it with white-knuckled intensity. Paul saw her marshal emotional control in the Bene Gesserit way: the penetrating inward stare, deep breathing. He could almost hear her repeating the litany. Presently, she said: “What have we gained?”
    “We’ve kept the Guild off balance,” Chani said.
    “We want to avoid a showdown confrontation with our enemies,” Alia said. “We have no special desire to kill them. There’s enough butchery going on under the Atreides banner.”
    She feels it, too, Paul thought. Strange, what a sense of compelling responsibility they both felt for that brawling, idolatrous universe with its ecstasies of tranquility and wild motion. Must we protect them from themselves? he wondered. They play with nothingness every moment—empty lives, empty words. They ask too much of me. His throat felt tight and full. How many moments would he lose? What sons? What dreams? Was it worth the price his vision had revealed? Who would ask the living of some far distant future, who would say to them: “But for Muad’dib, you would not be here.”
    “Denying them their melange would solve nothing,” Chani said. “So the Guild’s navigators would lose their ability to see into timespace. Your Sisters of the Bene Gesserit would lose their truthsense. Some people might die before their time. Communication would break down. Who could be blamed?”
    “They wouldn’t let it come to that,” Irulan said.
    “Wouldn’t they?” Chani asked. “Why not? Who could blame the Guild? They’d be helpless, demonstrably so.”
    “We’ll sign the treaty as it stands,” Paul said.
    “M’Lord,” Stilgar said, concentrating on his hands, “there is a question in our minds.”
    “Yes?” Paul gave the old Fremen his full attention.
    “You have certain … powers,” Stilgar said. “Can you not locate the Entente despite the Guild?”
    Powers! Paul thought. Stilgar couldn’t just say: “You’re prescient. Can’t you trace a path in the future that leads to Tupile?”
    Paul looked at the golden surface of the table. Always the same problem: How could he express the limits of the inexpressible? Should he speak of