'Let it not alarm you,' Tormsa said. 'Animals here are accustomed to it. Sometimes, they may pause, but only for an instant and then they go on as if nothing has happened. Which, for them, is true. It is only for us that something evil may happen.'
Presently, Tormsa stood. 'We will go down into the valley now. Follow closely. Do exactly what I do and nothing else.'
Duncan fell into step behind his guide. Soon, they were under the covering trees. Sometime during the night's passage, Duncan realized, he had begun to accept his place in the schemes of others. A new patience was taking over his awareness. And there was excitement goaded by curiosity.
What kind of a universe had come out of the Atreides times? Gammu. What a strange place Giedi Prime had become.
Slowly but distinctly, things were being revealed and each new thing opened a view to more that could be learned. He could feel patterns taking shape. One day, he thought, there would be a single pattern and then he would know why they had brought him back from the dead.
Yes, it was a matter of opening doors, he thought. You opened one door and that let you into a place where there were other doors. You chose a door in this new place and examined what that revealed to you. There might be times when you were forced to try all of the doors but the more doors you opened, the more certain you became of which door to open next. Finally, a door would open into a place you recognized. Then you could say: 'Ahhhh, this explains everything.'
'Searchers come,' Tormsa said. 'We are browsing animals now.' He reached up to a screening bush and tore down a small limb.
Duncan did the same.
'I must rule with eye and claw - as the hawk among lesser birds.' -Atreides assertion (Ref: BG Archives)
At daybreak, Teg emerged from the concealing windbreaks beside a main road. The road was a wide, flat thoroughfare - beam-hardened and kept bare of plant life. Ten lanes, Teg estimated, suitable for both vehicle and foot traffic. There was mostly foot traffic on it at this hour.
He had brushed most of the dust off his clothing and made sure there were no signs of rank on it. His gray hair was not as neat as he usually preferred but he had only his fingers for a comb.
Traffic on the road was headed toward the city of Ysai many kilometers across the valley. The morning was cloudless with a light breeze in his face moving toward the sea somewhere far behind him.
During the night he had come to a delicate balance with his new awareness. Things flickered in his second vision: knowledge of things around him before those things occurred, awareness of where he must put his foot in the next step. Behind this lay the reactive trigger that he knew could snap him into the blurring responses that flesh should not be able to accommodate. Reason could not explain the thing. He felt that he walked precariously along the cutting edge of a knife.
Try as he might, he could not resolve what had happened to him under the T-probe. Was it akin to what a Reverend Mother experienced in the spice agony? But he sensed no accumulation of Other Memories out of his past. He did not think the Sisters could do what he did. The doubled vision that told him what to anticipate from every movement within the range of his senses seemed a new kind of truth.
Teg's Mentat teachers had always assured him there was a form of living-truth not susceptible to proof by the marshaling of ordinary facts. It was carried sometimes in fables and poetry and often went contrary to desires, so he had been told.
'The most difficult experience for a Mentat to accept,' they said.
Teg had always reserved judgment on this pronouncement but now he was forced to accept it. The T-probe had thrust him over a threshold into a new reality.
He did not know why he chose this particular moment to emerge from hiding, except that it fitted him into an acceptable flow of human movement.
Most of that movement on the road was composed of market gardeners towing panniers of vegetables and fruit. The panniers were supported behind them on cheap suspensors. Awareness of that food sent sharp hunger pains through him but he forced himself to ignore them. With experience of more primitive planets in his long service to the Bene Gesserit, he saw this human activity as little different from that of farmers leading loaded animals. The foot traffic struck him as an odd mixture of ancient and modern - farmers afoot, their produce floating behind them on perfectly ordinary technological devices. Except for the suspensors this scene was very like a similar day in humankind's most ancient past. A draft animal was a draft animal, even if it came off an assembly line in an Ixian factory.
Using his new second vision, Teg chose one of the farmers, a squat, dark-skinned man with heavy features and thickly calloused hands. The man walked with a defiant sense of independence. He towed eight large panniers piled with rough-skinned melons. The smell of them was a mouth-watering agony to Teg as he matched his stride to that of the farmer. Teg strode for a few minutes in silence, then ventured: 'Is this the best road to Ysai?'
'It is a long way,' the man said. He had a guttural voice, something cautious in it.
Teg glanced back at the loaded panniers.
The farmer looked sidelong at Teg. 'We go to a market center. Others take our produce from there to Ysai.'
As they talked, Teg realized the farmer had guided (almost herded) him close to the edge of the road. The man glanced back and jerked his head slightly, nodding forward. Three more farmers came up beside them and closed in around Teg and his companion until tall panniers concealed them from the rest of the traffic.
Teg tensed. What were they planning? He sensed no menace, though. His doubled vision detected nothing violent in his immediate vicinity.
A heavy vehicle sped past them and on ahead. Teg knew of its passage only by the smell of burned fuel, the wind that shook the panniers, the thrumming of a powerful engine and sudden tension in his companions. The high panniers completely hid the passing vehicle.
'We have been looking for you to protect you, Bashar,' the farmer beside him said. 'There are many who hunt you but none of them with us along here.'
Teg shot a startled glance at the man.
'We served with you at Renditai,' the farmer said.
Teg swallowed. Renditai? He was a moment recalling it - only a minor skirmish in his long history of conflicts and negotiations.
'I am sorry but I do not know your name,' Teg said.
'Be glad that you do not know our names. It is better that way.'
'But I'm grateful.'
'This is a small repayment, which we are glad to make, Bashar.'
'I must get to Ysai,' Teg said.
'It is dangerous there.'
'It is dangerous everywhere.'
'We guessed you would go to Ysai. Someone will come soon and you will ride in concealment. Ahhhh, here he comes. We have not seen you here, Bashar. You have not been here.'
One of the other farmers took over the towing of his companion's load, pulling two strings of panniers while the farmer Teg had chosen hustled Teg under a tow rope and into a dark vehicle. Teg glimpsed shiny plasteel and plaz as the vehicle slowed only briefly for the pickup. The door closed sharply behind him and he found himself on a soft upholstered seat, alone in the back of a groundcar. The car picked up speed and soon was beyond the marching farmers. The windows around Teg had been darkened, giving him a dusky view of the passing scene. The driver was a shaded silhouette.
This first chance to relax in warm comfort since his capture almost lured Teg into sleep. He sensed no threats. His body still ached from the demands he had made on it and from the agonies of the T-probe.
He told himself, though, that he must stay awake and alert.
The driver leaned sideways and spoke over his shoulder without turning: 'They have been hunting for you for two days, Bashar. Some think you already off-planet.'
Two days?
