"Of what will your father speak?" Paul asked.
"He will speak of a plot against you - a plot among the Fremen."
"Why doesn't he bring that message in person?" Bannerjee demanded.
She kept her gaze on Paul. "My father cannot come here. The plotters suspect him. He'd not survive the journey."
"Could he not divulge the plot to you?" Bannerjee asked. "How came he to risk his daughter on such a mission?"
"The details are locked in a distrans carrier that only Muad'dib may open," she said. "This much I know."
"Why not send the distrans, then?" Paul asked.
"It is a human distrans," she said.
"I'll go, then," Paul said. "But I'll go alone."
"Chani must come with you!"
"Chani is with child."
"When has a Fremen woman refused to..."
"My enemies fed her a subtle poison," Paul said. "It will be a difficult birth. Her health will not permit her to accompany me now."
Before Scytale could still them, strange emotions passed over the girl-features: frustration, anger. Scytale was reminded that every victim must have a way of escape - even such a one as Muad'dib. The conspiracy had not failed, though. This Atreides remained in the net. He was a creature who had developed firmly into one pattern. He'd destroy himself before changing into the opposite of that pattern. That had been the way with the Tleilaxu kwisatz haderach. It'd be the way with this one. And then... the ghola.
"Let me ask Chani to decide this," she said.
"I have decided it," Paul said. "You will accompany me in Chani's stead."
"It requires a Sayyadina of the Rite!"
"Are you not Chani's friend?"
Boxed! Scytale thought. Does he suspect? No. He's being Fremen-cautious. And the contraceptive is a fact. Well - there are other ways.
"My father told me I was not to return," Scytale said, "that I was to seek asylum with you. He said you'd not risk me."
Paul nodded. It was beautifully in character. He couldn't deny this asylum. She'd plead Fremen obedience to a father's command.
"I'll take Stilgar's wife, Harah," Paul said. "You'll tell us the way to your father."
"How do you know you can trust Stilgar's wife?"
"I know it."
"But I don't."
Paul pursed his lips, then: "Does your mother live?"
"My true mother has gone to Shai-hulud. My second mother still lives and cares for my father. Why?"
"She's of Sietch Tabr?"
"Yes."
"I remember her," Paul said. "She will serve in Chani's place." He motioned to Bannerjee. "Have attendants take Otheym's Lichna to suitable quarters."
Bannerjee nodded. Attendants. The key word meant that this messenger must be put under special guard. He took her arm. She resisted.
"How will you go to my father?" she pleaded.
"You'll describe the way to Bannerjee," Paul said. "He is my friend."
"No! My father has commanded it! I cannot!"
"Bannerjee?" Paul said.
Bannerjee paused. Paul saw the man searching that encyclopedic memory which had helped bring him to his position of trust. "I know a guide who can take you to Otheym," Bannerjee said.
"Then I'll go alone," Paul said.
"Sire, if you... "
"Otheym wants it this way," Paul said, barely concealing the irony which consumed him.
"Sire, it's too dangerous," Bannerjee protested.
"Even an Emperor must accept some risks," Paul said. "The decision is made. Do as I've commanded."
Reluctantly, Bannerjee led the Face Dancer from the room.
Paul turned toward the blank screen behind his desk. He felt that he waited for the arrival of a rock on its blind journey from some height.
Should he tell Bannerjee about the messenger's true nature? he wondered. No! Such an incident hadn't been written on the screen of his vision. Any deviation here carried precipitate violence. A moment of fulcrum had to be found, a place where he could will himself out of the vision.
If such a moment existed...
= = = = = =
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine / human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals. -from The Tlielaxu Godbuk
As he crossed over on the high footbridge from his Keep to the Qizarate Office Building, Paul added a limp to his walk. It was almost sunset and he walked through long shadows that helped conceal him, but sharp eyes still might detect something in his carriage that identified him. He wore a shield, but it was not activated, his aides having decided that the shimmer of it might arouse suspicions.
Paul glanced left. Strings of sandclouds lay across the sunset like slatted shutters. The air was hiereg dry through his stillsuit filters.
He wasn't really alone out here, but the web of Security hadn't been this loose around him since he'd ceased walking the streets alone in the night. Ornithopters with night scanners drifted far overhead in seemingly random pattern, all of them tied to his movements through a transmitter concealed in his clothing. Picked men walked the streets below. Others had fanned out through the city after seeing the Emperor in his disguise - Fremen costume down to the stillsuit and temag desert boots, the darkened features. His cheeks had been distorted with plastene inserts. A catchtube ran down along his left jaw.
As he reached the opposite end of the bridge, Paul glanced back, noted a movement beside the stone lattice that concealed a balcony of his private quarters. Chani, no doubt. "Hunting for sand in the desert," she'd called this venture.