Free Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Page B

fragmentation, the natural destiny of all power? How could someone who’d never experienced the spice change of prescience conceive an awareness containing no localized spacetime, no personal image-vector nor associated sensory captives?
    He looked at Alia, found her attention on Irulan. Alia sensed his movement, glanced at him, nodded toward Irulan. Ahhh, yes: any answer they gave would find its way into one of Irulan’s special reports to the Bene Gesserit. They never gave up seeking an answer to their kwisatz haderach.
    Stilgar, though, deserved an answer of some kind. For that matter, so did Irulan.
    “The uninitiated try to conceive of prescience as obeying a Natural Law ,” Paul said. He steepled his hands in front of him. “But it’d be just as correct to say it’s heaven speaking to us, that being able to read the future is a harmonious act of man’s being. In other words, prediction is a natural consequence in the wave of the present. It wears the guise of nature, you see. But such powers cannot be used from an attitude that prestates aims and purposes. Does a chip caught in the wave say where it’s going? There’s no cause and effect in the oracle. Causes become occasions of convections and confluences, places where the currents meet. Accepting prescience, you fill your being with concepts repugnant to the intellect. Your intellectual consciousness, therefore, rejects them. In rejecting, intellect becomes a part of the processes, and is subjugated.”
    “You cannot do it?” Stilgar asked.
    “Were I to seek Tupile with prescience,” Paul said, speaking directly to Irulan, “this might hide Tupile.”
    “Chaos!” Irulan protested. “It has no … no … consistency.”
    “I did say it obeys no Natural Law,” Paul said.
    “Then there are limits to what you can see or do with your powers?” Irulan asked.
    Before Paul could answer, Alia said: “Dear Irulan, prescience has no limits. Not consistent? Consistency isn’t a necessary aspect of the universe.”
    “But he said …”
    “How can my brother give you explicit information about the limits of something which has no limits? The boundaries escape the intellect.”
    That was a nasty thing for Alia to do, Paul thought. It would alarm Irulan, who had such a careful consciousness, so dependent upon values derived from precise limits. His gaze went to Korba, who sat in a pose of religious reverie— listening with the soul. How could the Qizarate use this exchange? More religious mystery? Something to evoke awe? No doubt.
    “Then you’ll sign the treaty in its present form?” Stilgar asked.
    Paul smiled. The issue of the oracle, by Stilgar’s judgment, had been closed. Stilgar aimed only at victory, not at discovering truth. Peace, justice and a sound coinage—these anchored Stilgar’s universe. He wanted something visible and real—a signature on a treaty.
    “I’ll sign it,” Paul said.
    Stilgar took up a fresh folder. “The latest communication from our field commanders in Sector Ixian speaks of agitation for a constitution.” The old Fremen glanced at Chani, who shrugged.
    Irulan, who had closed her eyes and put both hands to her forehead in mnemonic impressment, opened her eyes, studied Paul intently.
    “The Ixian Confederacy offers submission,” Stilgar said, “but their negotiators question the amount of the Imperial Tax which they—”
    “They want a legal limit to my Imperial will,” Paul said. “Who would govern me, the Landsraad or CHOAM?”
    Stilgar removed from the folder a note on instroy paper. “One of our agents sent this memorandum from a caucus of the CHOAM minority.” He read the cipher in a flat voice: “The Throne must be stopped in its attempt at a power monopoly. We must tell the truth about the Atreides, how he maneuvers behind the triple sham of Landsraad legislation, religious sanction and bureaucratic efficiency.” He pushed the note back into the folder.
    “A constitution,” Chani murmured.
    Paul