Dune [Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6]

“The Guildsman, the Reverend Mother Mohiam, Korba . . . a few others.”

“You slew a Reverend Mother?”

“I did. Muad’Dib left word that it should not be done.” He shrugged. “But I disobeyed him, as Alia knew I would.”

Idaho stared again into the desert, feeling himself become whole, one person capable of seeing the pattern of what Paul had created. Judgment strategy, the Atreides called it in their training manuals. People are subordinate to government, but the ruled influence the rulers. Did the ruled have any concept, he wondered, of what they had helped create here?

“Alia . . .” Stilgar said, clearing his throat. He sounded embarrassed. “She needs the comfort of your presence.”

“And she is the government,” Idaho murmured.

“A regency, no more.”

“Fortune passes everywhere, as her father often said,” Idaho muttered.

“We make our bargain with the future,” Stilgar said. “Will you come now? We need you back there.” Again, he sounded embarrassed. “She is . . . distraught. She cries out against her brother one moment, mourns him the next.”

“Presently,” Idaho promised. He heard Stilgar leave. He stood facing into the rising wind, letting the grains of sand rattle against the stillsuit.

Mentat awareness projected the outflowing patterns into the future. The possibilities dazzled him. Paul had set in motion a whirling vortex and nothing could stand in its path.

The Bene Tleilax and the Guild had overplayed their hands and had lost, were discredited. The Qizarate was shaken by the treason of Korba and others high within it. And Paul’s final voluntary act, his ultimate acceptance of their customs, had ensured the loyalty of the Fremen to him and to his house. He was one of them forever now.

“Paul is gone!” Alia’s voice was choked. She had come up almost silently to where Idaho stood and was now beside him. “He was a fool, Duncan!”

“Don’t say that!” he snapped.

“The whole universe will say it before I’m through,” she said.

“Why, for the love of heaven?”

“For the love of my brother, not of heaven.”

Zensunni insight dilated his awareness. He could sense that there was no vision in her—had been none since Chani’s death. “You practice an odd love,” he said.

“Love? Duncan, he had but to step off the track! What matter that the rest of the universe would have come shattering down behind him? He’d have been safe . . . and Chani with him!”

“Then . . . why didn’t he?”

“For the love of heaven,” she whispered. Then, more loudly, she said: “Paul’s entire life was a struggle to escape his Jihad and its deification. At least, he’s free of it. He chose this!”