And that was a more subtle and profound matter.
She heard approaching footsteps, turned to see Paul come out of the cave’s depths trailed by the elfin- faced Chani.
Then she wondered at herself, thinking:
“Mother.”
Paul stopped in front of her. Chani stood at his elbow.
“Mother, do you know what they’re doing back there?”
Jessica looked at the dark patch of his eyes staring out from the hood. “I think so.”
“Chani showed me … because I’m supposed to see it and give my … permission for the weighing of the water.”
Jessica looked at Chani.
“They’re recovering Jamis’ water,” Chani said, and her thin voice came out nasal past the nose plugs. “It’s the rule. The flesh belongs to the person, but his water belongs to the tribe … except in the combat.”
“They say the water’s mine,” Paul said.
Jessica wondered why this should make her suddenly alert and cautious.
“Combat water belongs to the winner,” Chani said. “It’s because you have to fight in the open without stillsuits. The winner has to get his water back that he loses while fighting.”
“I don’t want his water,” Paul muttered. He felt that he was a part of many images moving simultaneously in a fragmenting way that was disconcerting to the inner eye. He could not be certain what he would do, but of one thing he was positive: he did not want the water distilled out of Jamis’ flesh.
“It’s … water,” Chani said.
Jessica marveled at the way she said it.
“You will accept the water,” Jessica said.
She recognized the tone in her voice. She had used that same tone once with Leto, telling her lost Duke that he would accept a large sum offered for his support in a questionable venture—because money maintained power for the Atreides.
On Arrakis, water was money. She saw that clearly.
Paul remained silent, knowing then that he would do as she ordered—not because she ordered it, but because her tone of voice had forced him to re-evaluate. To refuse the water would be to break with accepted Fremen practice.
Presently Paul recalled the words of 467 Kalima in Yueh’s O.C. Bible. He said: “From water does all life begin.”
Jessica stared at him.
“Thus it is spoken,” Chani said. “Giudichar mantene: It is written in the Shah-Nama that water was the first of all things created.”
For no reason she could explain (and
“It is time!”
The voice was Stilgar’s ringing in the cavern. “Jamis’ weapon has been killed. Jamis has been called by Him, by Shai-hulud, who has ordained the phases for the moons that daily wane and—in the end—appear as bent and withered twigs.” Stilgar’s voice lowered. “Thus it is with Jamis.”
Silence fell like a blanket on the cavern.
Jessica saw the gray-shadow movement of Stilgar like a ghost figure within the dark inner reaches. She glanced back at the basin, sensing the coolness.
“The friends of Jamis will approach,” Stilgar said.
Men moved behind Jessica, dropping a curtain across the opening. A single glowglobe was lighted overhead far back in the cave. Its yellow glow picked out an inflowing of human figures. Jessica heard the rustling of the robes.
Chani took a step away as though pulled by the light.
Jessica bent close to Paul’s ear, speaking in the family code: “Follow their lead; do as they do. It will be a simple ceremony to placate the shade of Jamis.”
Chani glided back to Jessica’s side, took her hand. “Come, Sayyadina. We must sit apart.”
Paul watched them move off into the shadows, leaving him alone. He felt abandoned.
The men who had fixed the curtain came up beside him.
“Come, Usul.”
He allowed himself to be guided forward, to be pushed into a circle of people being formed around Stilgar, who stood beneath the glowglobe and beside a bundled, curving, and angular shape gathered beneath a robe on the rock floor.
The troop crouched down at a gesture from Stilgar, their robes hissing with the movement. Paul settled with them, watching Stilgar, noting the way the overhead globe made pits of his eyes and brightened the touch of green fabric at his neck. Paul shifted his attention to the robe-covered mound at Stilgar’s feet, recognized the handle of a baliset protruding from the fabric.
“The spirit leaves the body’s water when the first moon rises,” Stilgar intoned. “Thus it is spoken. When we see the first moon rise this night, whom will it summon?”
“Jamis,” the troop responded.
Stilgar turned full circle on one heel, passing his gaze across the ring of faces. “I was a friend of Jamis,” he said. “When the hawk plane stooped upon us at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was Jamis pulled me to safety.”
He bent over the pile beside him, lifted away the robe. “I take this robe as a friend of Jamis—leader’s right.” He draped the robe over a shoulder, straightening.
Now, Paul saw the contents of the mound exposed: the pale glistening gray of a stillsuit, a battered literjon, a kerchief with a small book in its center, the bladeless handle of a crysknife, an empty sheath, a folded pack, a paracompass, a distrans, a thumper, a pile of fist-sized metallic hooks, an assortment of what looked like small rocks within a fold of cloth, a clump of bundled feathers … and the baliset exposed beside the folded pack.
Paul swallowed, shook his head.
Again, Stilgar bent over the mound.
“For Jamis’ woman and for the guards,” he said. The small rocks and the book were taken into the folds of his robe.
“Leader’s right,” the troop intoned.
“The marker for Jamis’ coffee service,” Stilgar said, and he lifted a flat disc of green metal. “That it shall be given to Usul in suitable ceremony when we return to the sietch.”
“Leader’s right,” the troop intoned.