Chapter 29 Chapter Twenty Nine

Ghanima walked cautiously and slowly on the way back to Taib's cave, keeping close to the shadow of the dunes.She lay silently on the ground as the search party passed to her south. A painful reality seized her: Sandworm had taken the bodies of Tiger and Leto, and danger lay ahead.He was dead; her twin brother was dead.She wiped away tears, anger steaming inside her.At this point, she's pure Freemen.She knew herself and let her anger diffuse. She knew how the Fremen were portrayed.Amoral, lost in their thirst for vengeance, they swore no mercy against those old enemies who drove them from planet to planet.This view is of course foolish.Only the most primitive savages are free from the fetters of a moral conscience.Freemen have a highly developed morality, at the core of which is the right to be human.The Gentiles thought they were cruel—and the Fremen thought so of the Gentiles.Every Fremen knows that he can commit cruelty and not feel guilty about it.The Fremen are not ashamed of such things as the Gentiles are, and their religious ceremonies ease their guilt before it overwhelms them.Their deepest consciousness knows that any crime can be attributed—or at least in part—to extenuating circumstances: the failure of governing institutions, or an innate malevolence shared by people, or bad luck etc.Any intelligent being should know that these things are just a conflict between the physical body and the chaotic universe outside.

Thus, Ghanima felt that he had become a pure Fremen, with the cruelty of the Fremen.All she needed was a target—apparently it was the Corino family.She longed to see Falakon's blood flow at her feet. There is no enemy ambushing beside the diversion canal, and even the search team has already gone elsewhere.She stepped onto a mud bridge, crossed the water, and crawled across the wormwood in front of the cave to the secret entrance. A light flashed in front of her, and she fell to the ground suddenly. Looking through the gaps in the alfalfa, I saw a woman entering the secret passage of the cave from the outside. The people in the cave obviously did not forget to use the correct way to welcome this uninvited guest.In times of crisis, the Fremen always use strong lights to welcome strangers who want to enter the cave, and make the stranger temporarily blind, so as to buy time for the guards in the cave to respond correctly.However, this way of welcoming does not illuminate the desert outside the cave, so that Ganima can see it here.The only reason is that the sealing strip of the cave has been removed.

Ghanima was distressed that the cave was so laxly defended.Such casual light, not to mention those lacy-shirted Fremen everywhere! The light casts a fan on the ground at the base of the cliff.A young girl ran from the shadows of the orchard into the light, and there was something frightening in her movements.Ghanima saw a circular halo of spherical lights flashing in the passage, and a group of insects surrounded the halo. The light revealed two shadows in the passage: a man and the girl.They held hands and looked into each other's eyes. Ghanima felt that there was something wrong with the couple.They are not simple lovers, they will find a chance to have a tryst here while everyone else is out searching.The spherical light was installed on the rock wall above and behind them, and the two of them stood in front of the illuminated arch and talked, leaving their shadows on the ground outside the cave under the night sky, and anyone could easily see their movements .Every now and then the man would let go and make short gestures in the light, looking furtive.When he was done, his hand retracted into the shadows again.

The whining of nocturnal animals filled the darkness around Ghanima, but she wasn't distracted by it. What are these two doing? The man's movements are so rigid, so careful. He turned around.The reflection of light from the woman's gown revealed his silhouette.He had a rough red face and a big herpes-ridden nose. Ghanima gasped.She knows him.Parembasa!He was the grandson of a Neb whose father served the Atreides.This face—and what was revealed by his robes when he turned around—made up the whole picture for Ghanima.He wore a leather belt under his robes, and on the leather belt hung a box whose keys and dials reflected light.It's definitely a product from Treylax or Eckon, and it's definitely a signaler for tiger control.Parembasa!This means that another Neb family has fallen to Corino.

Who is this woman?unimportant.She is the one being used by Parembasa. Ghanima suddenly had a Bee Geist idea: every planet has its own cycle, and so do people. Seeing Parembasa standing here with the woman, watching his annunciators and furtive movements, Ganima fully remembered the man.I should have suspected him long ago, she thought, the signs were so obvious. Immediately afterwards, her heart twitched again: He killed my brother! She forced herself to calm down.If she was found, he would kill her, too.Now she finally understood why he had exposed the light in a non-Freeman way, thereby revealing the location of the secret passage.They were using the lights to see if any of their prey would come back alive.Because they don't know the result yet, they must be anxious while waiting.

Now, when Ghanima saw the annunciator, she finally understood his gesture.Parembasa frequently pressed a button on the annunciator, expressing his inner anger and anxiety. The presence of these two people made Ghanima understand many things.Probably every entrance to the cave had someone like it waiting for her. The clay on her nose was itching and she scratched it with her hands.Her injured leg was still aching, and the hand that was supposed to hold the knife felt a burning sensation, sometimes mixed with tingling pain.Fingers are still numb.If she had to use a knife, she had to use her left hand.

Ghanima also thought about using a shotgun, but the noise it made was sure to cause unnecessary trouble.Had to think of another way. Parembasa turned again, turned his back to the light, and appeared to be a black object under the light.As the woman spoke, her attention was still on the night outside.There was a sort of disciplined vigilance about her, and she knew how to see the darkness out of the corner of her eye.She's not just a useful tool, she's part of a larger conspiracy. Ghanima recalled that Parembasa had aspired to be a kemacom, a political governor under the Church.He must have been part of a larger plan, and he had many others of his kind, even in Teb's lair.Ghanima was lost in thought.If she could capture one of them alive, many others would be confessed.

The "sizzling" sound of a small animal drinking water by the aqueduct caught Ghanima's attention.Natural sounds and natural sights.She searched in her own memory, somehow, the memory bank remained strangely silent, but she still came into contact with Princess Joff, who was imprisoned in Assyria by Senakrib.The memory of the princess told Ganima what to do.To her, Parembasa and his women were just children, capricious and dangerous.They didn't know Joffe, or even the name of the planet on which Joffe and Senacrib lived and turned to dust.If there was any need to explain to these two conspirators what was about to happen to them, it could only begin with action.

And end with practical action. Ghanima turned over and lay on her side, took off the Freeman survival kit, and pulled out the ventilation tube from the fastening buckle.Then she uncapped the snorkel and removed the long filter.Now she has an empty tube on hand.Then she took another needle from her sewing kit, pulled out the Screaming Blade, and dipped the needle into the poisonous cavity at the tip that once housed the nerve of the sandworm.An injured arm can make these movements more difficult.Finally, she took a roll of spice fiber from the pocket of her survival kit, wrapped the needle tightly in the fiber, formed a needle dart, and inserted it into the snorkel.

Ganima held the weapon, and crawled towards the light for a distance.She moved so slowly that no movement could be seen in the clover field.As she made her way, she studied the insects clustered around the light.Yes, that clump of insects contained blood-sucking flies, known to feed on human blood.Poison dart attacks may thus be masked as harassment among vampire flies.There was only one final decision left: which of them to kill - the man or the woman? Muritz.The name suddenly popped up in Ghanima's consciousness.That's the woman's name.She remembered hearing people talk about her.She circled Parembasa all day long like an insect around a light.She is the weaker one, easily shaken.

very good.Parembasa picked the wrong partner tonight. Ganima put the tube in her mouth, subconsciously loaded with the memory of Princess Jove.She aimed carefully and exhaled the air in her chest cavity sharply. Parembasa patted his face, took it away and found a small drop of blood on his hand.The needle was nowhere to be seen, apparently knocked off by himself with a wave. The woman said something lighthearted, and Parembasa laughed.Before the smile was over, his legs began to weaken.He collapsed on top of the woman, and the woman had to support him as best she could.When Ghanima came to her side and pointed the tip of the unsheathed howling blade at her waist, she was still supporting the man's body staggeringly. In a calm tone, Ghanima said: "Don't move, Muritz. My knife is poisonous. You can put down Parembasa, he is dead."

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