Chapter 23 Chapter Twenty Two

Jani peered out into the morning desert through a fissure beneath Teb's cavern.She wasn't wearing a still suit, so she felt pretty insecure in the desert.The entrance to the burrow was hidden in the high cliffs behind her. The desert... the desert... wherever she went, the desert was always in her heart.Returning to the desert is not so much going home as turning around and seeing something that was always there.A pain came from the stomach.Production time is almost here.She suppressed the pain and wanted to share this moment alone with her desert. It was dawn, and the land was silent.Light and shadow flow between the sand dunes and the shield wall mountain platform.The sun poured down from the high cliffs, and the monotonous desert scene stretching out into endless distances under the blue sky was suddenly drawn to her eyes.The scenery was monotonous and desolate, and it suited her mood of depression after learning that Paul was blind.

why are we hereshe thought. This is not a voyage of discovery.Paul could find nothing here but a place for her to have her baby.There are also some strange companions on this trip: Begas, the Trealax dwarf; Necromancer, Haight, who may also be the ghost of Duncan Idaho; Edric, the navigator and ambassador of the Guild ; Keith Helen Mohiam, the Madonna of the Bee Geist Sisterhood whom he hated; Likana, the strange daughter of Osem, who seemed to be under the watchful eye of the guards; Uncle Bu, and his lovely wife Harah...and Irulan...Alia... The sound of the wind through the rocks accompanied her thoughts.The day in the desert turns yellow on yellow, brown on brown, gray on gray.

Why the strange combination of these messy people? "We have forgotten the original meaning of the word 'companion'." Paul replied to her question, "It originally meant 'travel companions.' These people are our companions." "But what are they worth?" "You see!" he turned his terrible eye sockets to her, "we've lost the clarity and simplicity of life. Anything that can't be bottled, hit or prodded or stored, we feel It has no value." She said aggrievedly: "That's not what I meant." "Aha, my dearest," he said, reassuring her tenderly, "we are so rich in money and so poor in life. What a wicked, obstinate, stupid man I am..."

"you are not!" "I am, but you are equally true. My hands have been soaked in time too long, and I think... I tried to create life and didn't know that life had already been created." Then, he stroked her belly, the habitat of that new life. Thinking of this, she couldn't help but put her hands on her belly, trembling.She regretted begging Paul to bring her here. The desert wind stirred up a bad smell.It is emitted by the sand-fixing plants at the bottom of the cliff.A Fremen superstition gripped her: if there was a bad smell, it was an unlucky time.She faced the strong wind and found a sandworm outside the sand-fixing plant.It moved slowly, swimming between the dunes like a ghost ship, lapping the gravel along the way.Then, smelling the vapors, which were deadly poison to him, he dove headlong into the sand.

Sandworm is afraid of water, but she hates water.Water, once the spirit and soul of Arrakis, has now become poison.Water brings plague.Only the desert is clean. Below came a team of Freemen workers.They climbed into the middle door of the cave, their feet covered with mud. Fremen with mud on their feet! Above her head, the children of the cave began to sing their morning song, and their melodious songs floated out of the upper entrance.The singing made her feel that time flies, as fast as an eagle.She trembled. What storm did Paul see, with his eyesight that didn't need eyes? She sensed another side of him: a vicious lunatic, a loner tired of singing.

She found that the sky had turned a transparent gray, and the clouds were like smooth white beams.The sand-wrapped wind blew across the sky, engraving some strange patterns on it.A flash of white to the south caught her attention.With this line of white, this evening suddenly became different. She read the signal.There is an old Fremen saying: The white of the southern sky is the mouth of Shahulu.A storm is coming, a huge storm.She felt the gusts of wind heralding a storm, kicking up the dunes against her cheek.There was a pungent smell of death in the wind, like the smell of stinking water in a dark ditch, the smell of soaked sand, and the smell of burning stones.This kind of storm brings water, and it is for this reason that Xia Hulu, who hates water, sends out this foul-smelling wind.

Eagles also flew into the crevices where she was, looking for a safe place to escape the wind and sand.They were all brown like rocks, and their wings were crimson.I really want to be with them.They had places to hide; she had none. "Ma'am, the sandstorm is coming!" She turned to find the undead calling to her from the upper entrance of the cavern, and a sudden Freeman's terror came over her.It's nothing to die neatly, and you can leave the water of the corpse to the tribe.This is something she can understand.But... something that dies and comes back to life... The wind and sand beat her, shaved her face red.When I turned my head, I saw terrible dust rushing straight into the sky.The desert ravaged by wind and sand turned into a tea-brown color, restless.The dunes were like the waves crashing on the shore Paul had told her about.

After thinking about it, she felt that the desert was just a fleeting thing.Compared with finiteness and eternity, no matter how loud the sand waves beat on the cliff, it is just like a small boiling pot. But to her, sandstorms have filled the universe.All the animals hid... There was nothing left on the desert, only the sound of the desert itself: the sand blown up by the wind rubbed against the rocks, making a harsh scratching sound; The ground rolls down—bang!Somewhere out of sight, a stupid sandworm writhed and slapped its way across the desert, fleeing as fast as it could back into its dry, deep hole.

She stood only for a short moment, a moment, as if her own life was nothing compared to time itself.But at this moment, she felt that even this planet was about to be blown away by the wind, and like everything else carried by the wind, it became the dust of the universe. "We have to hurry." The Necromancer came to her. She sensed his fear, fear for her safety. "It'll tear your flesh off your bones," he said, as if he needed to explain to her what a sandstorm was. His concern dispelled her fear of him.Jani let the undead support her, stepped up the rocky steps step by step, and reached the cave.They walked into the screen wall that blocked the entrance of the cave, and the followers opened the airtight seal that sealed the water vapor. After they entered, the airtight door was closed immediately.

The stench of the cave irritated her nostrils.All kinds of smells are mixed here-the whole crowded and crowded rabbit farm, full of disgusting sour smell from recycling human excrement, and the familiar smell of food, and the tunnel when the machine is running The strange smell of burning stones... the strongest is the ubiquitous smell of spices: spices everywhere. She took a deep breath: home. The Necromancer let go of her arm, and stood by, submissive and quiet, like a machine temporarily useless and turned off.It's not like... He is still vigilantly observing the movement around him.

Chani hesitated at the door, something inexplicably puzzled her.This was indeed his home.When she was a child, she used to catch scorpions here by lighting a spherical lamp.Still, something has changed... "Don't you want to come in, madam?" asked the Necromancer. She felt the child in her belly stir, as if awakened by his words.She tried her best to hide her uncomfortable expression. "Ma'am?" said the Necromancer. "Why is Paul worried that I'm pregnant with our own child?" she asked. "He's worried about your safety, that's only natural," said the Necromancer. She touched her cheek with one hand, and the wind and sand had already turned her face red. "But isn't he worried about the safety of the child?" "Ma'am, he can't think about that child. As long as he thinks about it, he will think of the firstborn who was killed by Saduka." She studied the ghoul: the flat face, the incomprehensible robotic eyes.Was he really Duncan Idaho, the creature?Is he so nice to everyone?Is he telling the truth? "You should be accompanied by a doctor," said the Necromancer. Once again she heard concern for her safety in his words.She suddenly felt that her thoughts seemed to be uncovered, exposed, and could be seen by others at any time. "Hate, I'm afraid," she whispered. "Where's my friend?" "He is dealing with state affairs, and he can't get away for the time being." Necromancer said. She nodded.Various government departments also took a whole fleet of orthopters and followed them here.She suddenly understood what it was that confused her in the cave: the smell from a foreign land.It was the smell of perfume from the staff and assistants, as well as the smell of food and clothes, strange cosmetics, etc., permeating the entire cave, forming an undercurrent of foul smell. Chani shook her head, resisting the urge to let out a mean laugh.Even the smell changes when Muad'di is present! "He has some very urgent matters to attend to," said the Necromancer, misunderstanding her hesitation. "Yes... yes, I understand. You forgot? I came with that group." She recalled the voyage from Araken, and now admits she hadn't had any hope of surviving.Paul insisted on flying his orthopter himself.Blind, he actually drove the orthopter here.She knew that after that experience, nothing he did would surprise her again. Another pain spread from the abdomen. The Necromancer found her breathing fast and her face tensed.Said: "Are you going to give birth?" "I... yes, yes." "Hurry up, we can't delay." He said, grabbed her arm, and helped her hurriedly walk towards the hall below. Seeing that he was panicking to the extreme, she said, "There's still a little time." He didn't seem to hear. "The real Sunni way to have a baby," he said, helping her walk faster, "is to stay alert, but wait without purpose. Don't fight what's going on. Fighting is the mother of failure. Don't. It's a trap to always think about what you want to achieve. You can only get it if you don't want it." When they spoke, they had reached the bedroom door.He helped her through the curtain and cried, "Halah! Halah! Jani is going to give birth. Call the doctor!" Hearing his shout, the attendants also ran in.Among the scurrying crowd, Jani felt like an island of calm...until another round of pain hit her. Hayter withdrew into the corridor outside.After calming down, he had a chance to think about what he had done just now, and was amazed at his behavior.He felt as if he had been fixed at points in time at which all truth was temporary and relative.He knew he was panicking.Not just because Chani might die, but because when Chani died, Paul would come to him... Grieving... His dear one gone... Gone... Gone... It is impossible to create something out of nothing, Necromancer told himself.So where did this panic come from? He felt his Mentat mind dull before the question.He shivered and let out a long breath.There seemed to be a shadow floating in the mind, and the consciousness became pitch black.He found himself listening intently, waiting for some decisive sound, like a branch breaking in the jungle. He let out a breath, and his whole body shook violently.The danger passed temporarily, and there was no outbreak. He slowly gathered his strength, bit by bit cleared the force that suppressed his mind, and gradually entered the Mentat state.He exerted all his computing power.It's not good to do this, but it has to be done.He is no longer a person, but a data converter, and all his experiences are turned into data.His every move, every word and deed will bring variables and produce countless possibilities.These possibilities are passed in turn, compared and judged in turn. His forehead was beaded with sweat. Thoughts as light as a feather turned into darkness—the unknown.unlimited!Mentats cannot deal with infinity because given data cannot generalize infinity.Infinity cannot be transformed into concretely perceptible data, unless he himself is also transformed into infinity and temporarily into infinity. With a surge, he broke through the barrier.He has reached this level.He saw Bigas sitting in front of him, as if illuminated by the light emanating from within him. Bigas! What that dwarf ever did to him! Hayter felt himself teetering on the edge of some fatal abyss.He extends his Mentat time function forward to calculate his future behavior. "Compulsive impulse!" He panted out of breath, "I was manipulated by others, this is a compulsive impulse!" When Heite was speaking, a servant in a green robe came over and asked hesitantly, "What are you talking about, sir?" Undead didn't look at him, and nodded: "I said everything."