Chapter 22 Chapter Twenty Two

Paul felt his whole past and every experience before tonight turned to grains of sand in the desert.He sat next to his mother with his arms around his knees.They were in a small tent made of cloth and plastic.The tent and the Freeman clothes they were wearing were all taken from the bag on the scout plane. Paul already knew exactly who left the bag and who pointed the direction to the scout plane escorting them. It is more. The spy doctor sent them straight into the hands of Duncan Idaho. Paul looked out at the moonlit cliffs through the transparent part of the tent, and Idaho let them hide in a dark place.

Paul thought: I am a duke now, hiding like a child.The thought pained him, but he couldn't deny the wisdom of it. Tonight, some changes occurred in his consciousness... He has a very keen and clear judgment on his surroundings and everything that happened.He felt unable to stop the influx of information received, accurate and objective, each item adding to his knowledge.His calculations are concentrated in consciousness, which is Mentat ability, but it is better than Mentat ability. Paul recalled the moment of panic and panic: an unfamiliar patrol plane rushed towards them in the night, like a huge eagle in the desert, its wings wrapped in a gust of wind.What Paul imagined happened, the patrol plane flew forward, skimmed a ridge, and rushed towards the running figures...his mother and himself.Paul still remembered the burnt smell of the scout as it skimmed the sand, like sulfuric acid.

He knew his mother turned, expecting to be shot by Harkonnen mercenary lasguns, but recognized Idaho waving at them from the scout plane.He opened the hatch and yelled, "Run! There are sand lizards to the south of you!" But Paul knew who was piloting the ship when he turned around.He could tell exactly who was sitting in it from the way the scout plane flew and dived, a detail his mother hadn't noticed. Jessica, who was opposite Paul, moved and said, "That's only one possible explanation, the Harkonnens are holding Viet's wife. He hates the Harkonnens! I can't be wrong about that. You read The note he left. But why did he save us from death?"

The more I wrote: "Don't try to forgive me. I don't want to be forgiven. My burden is already heavy. What I have to do has already been done. There is no malice, and I don't want others to understand. This is my own suffering. It is the greatest test for me. I give you the seal of the Duke of Atrez to prove that what I wrote here is true. When you read this message, the Duke has passed away. Don’t be too sad, I assure you he will not die alone, the enemy we all hate will be buried with him." There was no letterhead or signature, but it could be seen from the familiar handwriting that it was written by Yue.

Thinking of the letter, Paul felt again that sharp, unfamiliar pain that seemed to be happening outside his new conscious senses and defensiveness.When he saw the words that his father was dead, he knew in his heart that all of this was true, but he felt that this was a piece of data information that he needed to record in his brain, no different from other information that needed to be recorded. Paul thought: I loved my father, there is no doubt about it.I should mourn him, there should be some kind of emotional expression. But he didn't feel that way, only one thing: this is an important message.

This news is like any other fact. At the same time, his brain was still adding conscious impressions, inferences and calculations. Paul thought again of what Halleck said: "Emotions are only necessary for beasts or for lovemaking. No matter what your emotions are, if you have to, you have to fight." Paul thought: Maybe this is the root cause.I will mourn my father again when I have time. Paul could not feel at ease in his own precise and cold existence.He realized that his heightened alertness was only the beginning, and that it would only grow stronger.He had first experienced that terrible purpose when he was tested by the Holy Mother Keith Helen Mohiam, and it was now seeping through him.His right hand... the burning hand... trembled and throbbed.

Is this what they call Kvitzaki Hadenatch?Paul asked himself. "Maybe Hawat made another mistake," Jessica said. "I think maybe it's not a Suk doctor." "He knows everything we know ... and more," Paul said.He thought to himself: Why is she so slow to understand the facts?He went on: "If Idaho can't find Keynes, we'll..." "He's not our only hope," she said. "That's not what I meant," he said. She could hear the harshness in his words, a condescending tone.Jessica stared at him in the dark, and Paul was a chiseled silhouette against the moonlit backdrop of the cliffs.

"Some of your father's men must have escaped too," Jessica said. "We've got to get them together and find..." "We're on our own," he said. "The first thing we need to do is find our family's atomic weapon. We've got to get it before the Harkonnen find it." "It's unlikely they'll find out," she said, "that the weapons are hidden..." "There can't be any fluke mentality." But Jessica was thinking: what was on his mind was that the family's atomic weapons would be used for blackmail, threatening the safety of the entire planet and spices.But all he can hope for now is to remain anonymous and escape capture.

His mother's words made Paul think of something else...a ducal concern like the people lost tonight.Paul thought: the people are the real strength of a big family. He remembered what Hawat said: "It is a tragedy to be separated from people; a place is just a place." "They used Sadoka," Jessica said. "We have to wait until Sadoka is gone." "They think we're under siege in the desert and Sadokar," Paul said. "They plan not to leave a single Atrez...completely exterminated. Don't expect our people to escape." "They can't take risks endlessly, and exposure is one of the culprits."

"Can't you?" "Some of our people must have escaped." "Will there be?" Jessica turned, horrified by the force of hatred in Paul's voice, his precise calculation of possibilities.She realized that Paul was outthinking her, judging the facts more comprehensively than she was.She helped develop that intellect, and now the results come naturally.But she found herself afraid of it.Thoughts raced through her, tears filled her eyes as she thought of the lost Duke and the paradise they shared. Jessica told herself: This is irreversible, Leido. "Sweet love, bitter end." She put her hand on her belly, feeling the presence of the fetus.I have this daughter of Atrez, whom I was commanded to conceive, but the Holy Mother was wrong: a daughter will not save my Ledo.The child is just a life in death extending into the future.I conceived her out of instinct, not obedience.

"Try the communication system again," Paul said. She thought: No matter how we hide it, thinking is always developing. Jessica found the radio that Idaho had left for them, and turned on the switch. The surface of the instrument lit up with green light, and there were bursts of high-pitched sounds.She lowered the volume and searched the channel, and the Atrez battle language call rang from the tent: "Retreat, meet up on the other side of the mountain. Fido reports: there are no survivors in Kassag, and Gilder Bank has been looted." Jessica thought: Kassag!It was a Harkonnen hotbed. "They are Sadokars," said the voice. "Look out for Sadokars in Atrez uniforms. They..." There was a roar from the microphone, and then silence. "Try another frequency," Paul said. Jessica asked, "Know what that means?" "I've expected that. They want Gilder to blame us for the destruction of the bank, we're stuck in Arrakis. Try another frequency." Jessica weighed his words: I expected that.What has happened to him?Jessica slowly returned to the instrument.She turned the knob, and intermittent desperate cries came from the microphone from time to time: "...Retreat...Assemble as much as possible, organize resistance...Trapped in the cave..." And the roars of Harkonnen cheering for victory came from time to time, as well as strict orders and battle reports.There is not enough material, and Jessica is still unable to decipher the records, but the tone coming out of it is clear. Harkonnen wins big. Paul shook the jug beside him, the water jingling in it.He took a deep breath, and looked through the transparent part of the tent, looking at the steep outline of the cliff outside in the starlight.With his left hand, he touched the automatic expansion sealing curtain at the entrance and exit of the tent. "Dawn is coming soon," he said. "We'll wait another day to see if Idaho can come back. But night can't wait any longer. In the desert, you have to travel at night and spend the day in a shelter." Jessica recalled a legendary experience in her mind: without a filtration suit, a person sitting in a shelter in the desert needs five liters of water a day to maintain his weight.Her skin felt the filtration suit she was wearing, and she thought: How important it is to our lives! "If we leave here, Idaho won't find us," she said. "There are already means of getting a confession from anyone," he said. "If Idaho doesn't come back by dawn, we have to consider the possibility of him being captured. How long do you think he can last?" This question does not need an answer.Jessica sat in silence. Paul opened the bag and took out a miniature illuminated booklet and magnifying glass. Green and orange letters emerged from the pages: "Water bag, filtration suit, energy cap, telescope, small pistol, map, compass, sand Ground hooks, sand snorkels, emergency lights..." Lots of things you need to survive on the desert. Suddenly, he threw the manual on the ground. "Where can we go?" Jessica asked. "My father talked about desert power," Paul said, "without that power, the Harkonnen could not have ruled the planet. They never really ruled the planet, and never will, just 10,000 Sado Card Legion, they still can't do it." "Paul, you're not going to say..." "We've got all the evidence in our hands," he said, "right here, this tent itself, this package and its contents, these filtration suits. We know the Gilders put an astronomical price on weather satellites, and we Also know..." "What do weather satellites have to do with this?" she asked. "They can't..." Jessica stopped. Paul found his hypervigilant awareness monitoring her reactions, analyzing and measuring every tiny detail. "You see now," Paul said, "weather satellites look at the ground. There's something deep in the desert that won't stand up to constant observation like this." "You mean the Gilders themselves control the planet?" She was too slow to react. "No!" said Paul, "the Fremen! They bribed the Gilders to keep their secrets. Their money is the spice of decay that anyone with the power of the desert can easily get. Much more accurate and the result of direct analytical measurements. Trust it!" "Paul," Jessica said, "you're not a Mentat yet, you can't know for sure how..." "I'll never be a Mentat," he said, "I'll be something else . . . a whimsy." "Paul! How can you say such a..." "Leave me alone for a moment!" He turned away and looked at the night outside.He asked himself, "Why can't I grieve?" He felt like every tissue in him wanted to do it, but he just couldn't do it. Never possible. Jessica had never heard such pain from her son's lips.She wanted to reach out to him, hug him, comfort him, help him...but she knew she was powerless.He had to make it through on his own. She noticed the shining manual on the ground, picked it up, glanced at the title page, and read: "The friendly desert manual, a place full of vitality, here will show you the beginning of life and the beauty of tenacity. Believe it , the god of the desert will not burn you." She thought: This reads like the book of Azar, those great secrets she had studied in those years.Has religious power descended on Arrakis? Paul picked up the universal compass, put it in his bag, and said, "Look at the ingenuity and incomparability of these special instruments for Freeman! We have to admit that there must be an irrefutable deep connection between the creation of these things and culture. " The stern hoarseness in his voice still worried Jessica, who hesitated for a moment, then read on and saw a map of the constellations in the sky of Arrakis: "Muaddi... the mouse." She noticed that the tail pointed north. Looking at his mother's face through the light in the handbook, Paul thought: Now, it's time for me to fulfill my father's original wish.While she still has time to grieve, I must tell her what my father told me to convey.Later grief can take our toll.He was amazed by his precise logic. "Mom," he said. "Ok?" She could hear a change in her son's tone, and that voice sent a chill through her.She had never heard such harsh self-control. "My father is dead," he said. She searched for the corresponding truth within herself...the way Bee Geist measures information...and she found it: a sense of great loss. Jessica nodded, speechless. "My father entrusted me," said Paul, "to convey a word to you. If something happened to him, he feared that you might think he didn't trust you." She thought: That is a useless doubt. "He wanted you to know that he never doubted you," Paul said, explaining his father's original intentions. "He wanted you to know that he always trusted you, loved you, and respected you absolutely. Will not doubt you. He has but one regret... that he did not make you his Duchess." Jessica burst into tears and wiped them with her hands, thinking: What a stupid waste of body water!But she knew what she was really feeling inside... trying to turn her grief into anger.Leido, my Leido!What terrible things we do to those we love!With one violent movement she turned off the light on the miniature booklet. She was sobbing and shaking. Listening to his mother's distraught cries, Paul felt a void in his heart.I am not sad, why?Why?He felt that his inability to mourn was a great defect. Jessica suddenly remembered the words in the "OC Bible": "Where there is gain, there will be loss; where there is stay, there will be loss; where there is love, there will be hatred; where there is peace, there will be war." Paul's mind was already engaged in cold, precise calculations.On this hostile planet, he saw their way.Paul can focus his consciousness on the future without opening the door of fantasy, showing various possibilities of the future with accurate calculations.At the same time, with a mysterious keenness, Paul's consciousness seems to cut into some kind of non-time level, tasting the wind of the future. Suddenly, Paul seemed to have found a necessary key, and his consciousness leaped into another realm, and he clings to it, holding on tightly, fearful that it will slip away.He looked around, as if he was in a new universe, with all the roads stretching far away...but this feeling was still an initial impression. He remembered seeing a tulle handkerchief fluttering in the wind, and now he felt that his future was also like that kerchief fluttering in the wind, uncertain and elusive. He sees someone. He felt the heat and cold of the elusive possibility. He knows names and places, feels inexplicable emotions, researches and reviews data and information of countless unknown places; he has time to detect feelings, but has no time to summarize, analyze and classify them. This is a level of possibility from the distant past to the distant future...from the most likely to the least likely.He saw his life end in various ways.He saw new planets, new civilizations. people. They were hordes, tens of thousands, uncountable, but orderly in Paul's consciousness. Even those Gilders. He thought: The Gilders... will be one of our ways too, my strangeness is accepted by super-valued close associations, always guaranteed to provide the necessary spices. But his life will always be plagued by the consciousness of constantly exploring the possibilities of the future, like a spaceship crashing in space, and thinking about it, he feels a sense of loss.However, this is also a way.In encountering a possible future, seeing Gilders, Paul himself has to admit, is weird. I have another insight, another kind of territory: there are many passages. This awareness brought him confidence, but also made him panic... In that new region, countless places appeared before his eyes, constantly changing. The hallucinations came and went quickly, flashing frighteningly before his eyes.Paul narrowed his eyes and looked around. The tent hidden in the cliff was still shrouded in night, and he heard his mother still weeping. But he still couldn't feel his own sorrow... that empty place seemed to be separated from his consciousness.Consciousness is still faithfully carrying out objective and independent work...evaluating, analyzing, calculating, collecting and processing data information, and giving answers, just like a Mentat. Paul now discovered that he had and was able to gather and process an amount of information that few could match, but that didn't make him tolerate the blank space in his mind.He felt that something had to be broken, and it was like a ticking time bomb in his mind, the timer was ticking.No matter what he did, everything went on as usual, it registered the nuances of everything around him...humidity, temperature, insects, the approach of dawn and the graying of the stars. That emptiness is intolerable, and knowing how the clock is set and ticked isn't much use.He can look back at his past and see where it all started...his training, the strengthening of his talents, his strict self-discipline, and even the "OC Bible" he saw at critical moments... Finally, a lot of spices; he can see The future... the most terrifying direction... He knows the ultimate goal of everything. He thought: I am a devil!A whimsical eccentric! "No," he said, "No! No! No!" He found himself pounding the ground while his faithful, unchanging consciousness registered it as an interesting message to analyze. "Paul!" His mother sat beside him, holding his hand, staring at him with a confused face. "Paul, what's the matter with you?" "You!" he said. "I'm here, Paul," she said, "I'm all right." "What did you do to me?" Paul asked. She suddenly realized that there was some deep root in Paul's question.She replied: "I gave birth to you." Her answer, born of instinct and her nuanced understanding, was just enough to calm Paul down.He felt his mother's hand, and his eyes followed the blurred outline of her face. (His rolling consciousness, noticing in new ways certain genetic traces of his mother's facial structure, finally boiled down the answer.) "Let me go," he said.She heard Paul's harsh tone, and obeyed. "Paul, would you like to tell me what happened?" "Do you know what you did when you trained me?" Paul asked. Jessica thought: There is no trace of childishness in his tone.She said: "What I want is the same as every other parent... I hope you have... superpowers and be different from other people." "no the same?" She heard his dissatisfaction and said, "Paul, I..." "You don't want a son!" he said. "What you want is a Kwizzaki Hadenatch! A male Bee Gist!" Paul's resentment made her cringe: "But Paul..." "Have you consulted your father about this?" She whispered to Paul in mourning, "Paul, whatever you are, you have your father's blood in your body as well as mine." "It shouldn't be the training," he said, "it shouldn't be the stuff that... wakes... sleepers." "Sleeper?" "It's here," Paul said, pointing to his heart with his fingers, "in my body. It's going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on." "Paul!" She could hear the hysteria in Paul's words. "Listen," Paul said, "you want Our Lady to know about my dreams, so please listen to her now. I just had a daydream. Do you know why?" "You must be calm," she said, "if there..." "Spice," Paul told her, "is in everything here...in the air, in the soil, in the food, etc. It's like the Truthsayer narcotic, it's poison!" Jessica was stunned! Lowering his voice, he repeated: "A poison...delicate, ingenious, imperceptible...irreversible. If you don't stop using it, you won't even be in danger of life. We can never leave Arrakis again, unless We carry a piece of this planet with us." His tone was majestic and terrifying, making it difficult to argue. "You and the spice," he said. "Anyone who inhales enough spice changes, and I thank you that I can consciously experience that change. I won't let it creep in unknowingly." , because I can see it." "Paul, you..." "I can see it," Paul repeated. There was madness in Paul's words, and Jessica didn't know what to do. "We're stuck here," Paul continued, iron control returning to his voice. "We're stuck." Jessica agreed. She didn't doubt the authenticity of Paul's words.No amount of tactical maneuvering, intrigue, not even Bee Geist pressure or super powers can completely rid them of Arrakis: Spices are addictive.Her body manifested itself long before conscious awareness. Jessica thought: We're going to spend our lives here, this hellish planet.This is the place for us, as long as we can escape Harkonen's pursuit.The purpose of her future life is also very clear: to preserve the important bloodlines for the Bi Geist project. "I must tell you my daydream," said Paul (with anger in his voice), "and to convince you of what I say, I must first tell you: You will live here... in Arrakis... The next daughter, my sister." Jessica gripped the tent wall, suppressing her fear.She knew that her pregnancy had not yet shown any signs, and it was impossible for others to know.It's just her own Bee Geist ability that allows her to discern subtle changes in her own body, or an embryo that's only a few weeks old. "Just service," Jessica murmured, keeping her Bee Geist motto firmly in mind. "We'll find a home among the Fremen," Paul said. "Your Mission has bought us a place of refuge there." Jessica told herself: They have prepared a way for us in the desert.But how did he know about the Guardian Mission?She found it difficult to control her inner fear, especially in the face of Paul's irresistible strangeness and majesty. Paul watched his mother in the dark, her fear and every reaction as clear to Paul's new insight as if she had stood under a blinding light. A sympathy welled up in Paul's heart. "I cannot yet tell you what might happen here," Paul said to his mother. "Even though I have seen them, I cannot yet tell to myself. This sense of the future seems out of my control. This just happened. In the near future, let's say a year, I can see some of it... a road, as wide as our central Caladan avenue. There are places I can't see... in the shadows... ...as if behind the mountain (he thought again of the level with the kerchief fluttering) ... there are many forks ..." He said nothing, and his memory was full of what he had seen.No experience or prescient dream in his life could fully bear this suddenness, when the veil of time was suddenly torn off, revealing his naked face. Reflecting on that experience, Paul realizes his terrible purpose... The burden of his life is like an ever-expanding bubble, expanding outward... Time recedes before it... Jessica felt for the tent light switch and turned it on. The dim green light dispelled the shadows and allayed Jessica's fears.She looked at Paul's face, his eyes... an inner visitation, and knew where she'd seen it before: in pictures from disaster records... on the faces of children who had experienced starvation and great harm Upper: The eyes are like two pits, the mouth is in a straight line, and the cheeks are sunken. It was a look of terrible insight, she thought, like a man forced to know when he will die. He is indeed no longer a child! Jessica began to think about the implications of Paul's words, and put everything else out of her mind. Paul could see the future, their escape path. "There is a way to escape the Harkonnen," she said. "Harkoning people!" Paul said contemptuously, "don't think about these twisted things." He looked at his mother, noticed the veins on her face through the light, and knew what she was thinking. She said, "You shouldn't think of people as human beings..." "Don't be so sure you can tell right from wrong," he said. "Those things from the past are with us. And, my mother, there's one thing you don't know yet, but you should know . . . We're Harkonnen." Her consciousness was in a frightening panic, blank, completely deprived of feeling.But Paul remained unrelenting, continuing to tell her the horrific truth coldly: "Next time you have a mirror, take a good look at your face... now look at mine. If you don't kid yourself, you will See the signs. Look at my hands, my bones, and if all that doesn't convince you, I've read a file, seen a place, and I have all the necessary information: We are Harkonnen !" "A defector in the family," she said, "is it? A cousin of one of Harkonnen's . . . " "You are the baron's own daughter," he said, seeing her put her hand over his mouth. "The baron had many affairs in his youth. Once he allowed himself to be seduced by a woman, but that time Bitby Geist, made for genetic inheritance." Paul spoke in a tone that sounded like a slap in the face, but it brought her back to her senses, and she found she couldn't refute his words.The many blind spots about my past gradually became clear: the need for a Bee Geist daughter was not to end the feud between Atrez and Harkonen, but to create and continue some part of their bloodline. some genetics. Paul seemed to see what was going on in her mind, and said, "They thought it was me, but I was not what they wanted. I came to this world early. But they didn't know it." Jessica put her hands over her mouth. God!He's Kwizaki Hadnaci! In his presence, Jessica felt naked, exposed.His eyes see every secret, nothing escapes.And this, Jessica knew very well, was the cause of her fear. "You think I'm Kwizaki Hadenatch," he said. "Forget that idea. I'm something else out of the blue!" Jessica thought: I've got to send a message to our school, and the kin game catalog might show what's going on. "By the time they knew about me, it was too late," Paul said. Jessica tried to distract him, dropped her hands, and said, "Are we going to find a place among the Fremen?" "The Fremans believe in a saying: Trust in the eternity of their ancestors," Paul said. "They say, 'Be ready to accept and love what comes your way.'" But Paul was thinking: Yes, my lord mother , we will merge into the Fremen.You'll have blue eyes too, and a scab on your pretty nose from the filter tube of your dialysis suit... You'll give birth to my sister, Santa Alia. "If you're not Kwizaki Hadenatch," Jessica said, "then..." "You can't know," he said. "You can't believe it until you've seen it." He thought to himself: I am a seed. He suddenly realized how fertile the land he was in. Thinking of this, the terrible purpose could not help filling his heart and body, almost suffocating him with sorrow. On the road ahead, he saw two forks... and in one, he confronted the wicked old baron and said, "Hi, my grandfather." Paul felt sick at the thought of what was going to happen on this road . On the other fork was a long, unfamiliar, gray mass.No violent climax.He saw a warrior religion, with flames spreading, and the green and black banner of Atrez flying above a frenzied regiment of soldiers drunk with spiced spirits.Among them were Gurney Halleck and a few of his father's old subordinates.All wear eagle ornaments. "I can't go that way," he murmured, "that's what the old hags at your school expect." "I don't understand what you're saying, Paul," his mother said. He said nothing, thinking of himself as a seed, of the first experience of that terrible purpose in his awakened racial consciousness.He found that he no longer hated Bee Gist or the Emperor or the Harkonnen.They all exist because of the race's need to renew scattered genetic elements, pairing, fusing and improving bloodlines in new genetic populations, resulting in stronger populations.And the race knows only one way to be sure...the old and tried method...holy war. He thought: Of course, I can't choose that way. But in his eyes, he saw once again the shrine containing his father's head and the violence under the waving green and black battle flag. Jessica coughed, disturbed by his silence. "So...the Fremen will provide us with a place to live?" Paul looked up, looked at the traces of the noble inbred line on her face, and said, "Yes, this is one of the ways." He nodded: "They will call me... Moyadi...'Guide Leader.' Yes...that's what they call me." Paul closed his eyes and thought: Father, now I can mourn you.He felt tears streaming down his cheeks.