In the press of the crowd, Paul knew he was completely vulnerable if Rasir planned violence.
The old man pressed close, one hand beneath a sand-grimed robe - grasping the hilt of a crysknife, no doubt. Paul set himself as best he could to resist attack. The old man moved his head toward Paul's ear, whispered: 'We will go with the others.'
It was the signal to identify his guide. Paul nodded.
Rasir drew back, faced the altar.
'She comes from the east,' the acolytes chanted. 'The sun stands at her back. All things are exposed. In the full glare of light - her eyes miss no thing, neither light nor dark.'
A wailing rebaba jarred across the voices, stilled them, receded into silence. With an electric abruptness, the crowd surged forward several meters. They were packed into a tight mass of flesh now, the air heavy with their breathing and the scent of spice.
'Shai-hulud writes on clean sand!' the acolytes shouted.
Paul felt his own breath catch in unison with those around him. A feminine chorus began singing faintly from the shadows behind the shimmering pru-door: 'Alia... Alia... Alia... ' It grew louder and louder, fell to a sudden silence.
Again - voices beginning vesper-soft:
Slowly, the voices trailed off.
Paul felt sickened. What are we doing? he asked himself. Alia was a child witch, but she was growing older. And he thought: Growing older is to grow more wicked.
The collective mental atmosphere of the temple ate at his psyche. He could sense that element of himself which was one with those all around him, but the differences formed a deadly contradiction. He stood immersed, isolated in a personal sin which he could never expiate. The immensity of the universe outside the temple flooded his awareness. How could one man, one ritual, hope to knit such immensity into a garment fitted to all men?
Paul shuddered.
The universe opposed him at every step. It eluded his grasp, conceived countless disguises to delude him. That universe would never agree with any shape he gave it.
A profound hush spread through the temple.
Alia emerged from the darkness behind the shimmering rainbows. She wore a yellow robe trimmed in Atreides green - yellow for sunlight, green for the death which produced life. Paul experienced the sudden surprising thought that Alia had emerged here just for him, for him alone. He stared across the mob in the temple at his sister. She was his sister. He knew her ritual and its roots, but he had never before stood out here with the pilgrims, watched her through their eyes. Here, performing the mystery of this place, he saw that she partook of the universe which opposed him.
Acolytes brought her a golden chalice.
Alia raised the chalice.
With part of his awareness, Paul knew that the chalice contained the unaltered melange, the subtle poison, her sacrament of the oracle.
Her gaze on the chalice, Alia spoke. Her voice caressed the ears, flower sound, flowing and musical:
'In the beginning, we were empty,' she said.
'Ignorant of all things,' the chorus sang.
'We did not know the Power that abides in every place,' Alia said.
'And in every Time ' the chorus sang.
'Here is the Power,' Alia said, raising the chalice slightly.
'It brings us joy,' sang the chorus.
And it brings us distress, Paul thought.
'It awakens the soul,' Alia said.
'It dispels all doubts,' the chorus sang.
'In worlds, we perish,' Alia said.
'In the Power, we survive,' sang the chorus.
Alia put the chalice to her lips, drank.
To his astonishment, Paul found he was holding his breath like the meanest pilgrim of this mob. Despite every shred of personal knowledge about the experience Alia was undergoing, he had been caught in the tao-web. He felt himself remembering how that fiery poison coursed into the body. Memory unfolded the time-stopping when awareness became a mote which changed the poison. He reexperienced the awakening into timelessness where all things were possible. He knew Alia's present experience, yet he saw now that he did not know it. Mystery blinded the eyes.
Alia trembled, sank to her knees.
Paul exhaled with the enraptured pilgrims. He nodded. Part of the veil began to lift from him. Absorbed in the bliss of a vision, he had forgotten that each vision belonged to all those who were still on-the-way, still to become. In the vision, one passed through a darkness, unable to distinguish reality from insubstantial accident. One hungered for absolutes which could never be.
Hungering, one lost the present.
Alia swayed with the rapture of spice change.
Paul felt that some transcendental presence spoke to him, saying: 'Look! See there! See what you've ignored?' In that instant, he thought he looked through other eyes, that he saw an imagery and rhythm in this place which no artist or poet could reproduce. It was vital and beautiful, a glaring light that exposed all power-gluttony... even his own.
Alia spoke. Her amplified voice boomed across the nave.
'Luminous night,' she cried.
A moan swept like a wave through the crush of pilgrims.
'Nothing hides in such a night!' Alia said. 'What rare light is this darkness? You cannot fix your gaze upon it! Senses cannot record it. No words describe it.' Her voice lowered. 'The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ahhhhh, what gentle violence!'
Paul felt that he waited for some private signal from his sister. It could be any action or word, something of wizardry and mystical processes, an outward streaming that would fit him like an arrow into a cosmic bow. This instant lay like quivering mercury in his awareness.
'There will be sadness,' Alia intoned. 'I remind you that all things are but a beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity.'
Paul suppressed a cry of disappointment as Alia lowered her head. She had not said the thing he waited to hear. His body felt like a dry shell, a husk abandoned by some desert insect.
