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needn't be actual."
"Deceit is a tool of statecraft," Irulan agreed.
"There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution
always discover,"
Paul said.
Korba straightened from his reverent pose. "M'Lord?"
"Yes?" And Paul thought. Here now! Here's one who may harbor secret sympathies
for an imagined rule of Law.
"We could begin with a religious constitution," Korba said, "something for the
faithful who --
"
"No!" Paul snapped. "We will make this an Order in Council. Are you recording
this, Irulan?"
"Yes, m'Lord," Irulan said, voice frigid with dislike for the menial role he
forced upon her.
"Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They're organized
power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power
mobilized and it has no conscience.
It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and
individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations. I,
however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for
my people, I forbid a constitution. Order in Council, this date,
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file:///F|/rah/Herbert,%20Frank/Dune%202%20-%20Dune%20Messiah.txt etcetera,
etcetera."
"What of the Ixian concern about the tax, m'Lord?" Stilgar asked.
Paul forced his attention away from the brooding, angry look on Korba's face,
said: "You've a proposal, Stil?"
"We must have control of taxes, Sire."
"Our price to the Guild for my signature on the Tupile Treaty," Paul said, "is
the submission of the Ixian Confederacy to our tax. The Confederacy cannot
trade without Guild transport. They'll pay."
"Very good, m'Lord." Stilgar produced another folder, cleared his throat. "The
Qizarate's report on Salusa Secundus. Irulan's father has been putting his
legions through landing maneuvers."
Irulan found something of interest in the palm of her left hand. A pulse
throbbed at her neck.
"Irulan," Paul asked, "do you persist in arguing that your father's one legion
is nothing more than a toy?"
"What could he do with only one legion?" she asked. She stared at him out of
slitted eyes.
"He could get himself killed," Chani said.
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Paul nodded. "And I'd be blamed."
"I know a few commanders in the Jihad," Alia said, "who'd pounce if they
learned of this."
"But it's only his police force!" Irulan protested.
"Then they have no need for landing maneuvers," Paul said. "I suggest that
your next little note to your father contain a frank and direct discussion of
my views about his delicate position."
She lowered her gaze. "Yes, m'Lord. I hope that will be the end of it. My
father would make a good martyr."
"Mmmmmm," Paul said. "My sister wouldn't send a message to those commanders
she mentioned unless I ordered it."
"An attack on my father carries dangers other than the obvious military ones,"
Irulan said.
"People are beginning to look back on his reign with a certain nostalgia."
"You'll go too far one day," Chani said in her deadly serious Fremen voice.
"Enough!" Paul ordered.
He weighed Irulan's revelation about public nostalgia -- ah, now! that'd
carried a note of truth. Once more, Irulan had proved her worth.
"The Bene Gesserit send a formal supplication," Stilgar said, presenting
another folder. "They wish to consult you about the preservation of your
bloodline."
Chani glanced sideways at the folder as though it contained a deadly device.
"Send the Sisterhood the usual excuses," Paul said.
"Must we?" Irulan demanded.
"Perhaps . . . this is the time to discuss it," Chani said.
Paul shook his head sharply. They couldn't know that this was part of the
price he had not yet decided to pay.
But Chani wasn't to be stopped. "I have been to the prayer wall of Sietch Tabr
where I was born," she said. "I have submitted to doctors. I have knelt in the
desert and sent my thoughts into the depths where dwells Shai-hulud. Yet" --
she shrugged -- "nothing avails."
Science and superstition, all have failed her, Paul thought. Do I fail her,
too, by not telling her what bearing an heir to House Atreides will
precipitate? He looked up to find an expression of pity in Alia's eyes. The
idea of pity from his sister repelled him. Had she, too, seen that terrifying
future?
"My Lord must know the dangers to his realm when he has no heir," Irulan said,
using her Bene
Gesserit powers of voice with an oily persuasiveness. "These things are
naturally difficult to discuss, but they must be brought into the open. An
Emperor is more than a man. His figure leads the realm. Should he die without
an heir, civil strife must follow. As you love your people, you cannot leave
them thus?"
Paul pushed himself away from the table, strode to the balcony windows. A wind
was flattening the smoke of the city's fires out there. The sky presented a
darkening silver-blue softened by the evening fall of dust from the Shield
Wall. He stared southward at the escarpment which protected his northern lands
from the coriolis wind, and he wondered why his own peace of mind could find
no such shield.
The Council sat silently waiting behind him, aware of how close to rage he
was.
Paul sensed time rushing upon him. He tried to force himself into a
tranquility of many balances where he might shape a new future.
Disengage . . . disengage . . . disengage, he thought. What would happen if he
took Chani, file:///F|/rah/Herbert,%20Frank/Dune%202%20-%20Dune%20Messiah.txt
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