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“My lord. The Great Houses have answered. They refuse to honor your ascendency.”
Finally.
The hot rush of inevitably drowned Paul, dulling everything but the sudden, frantic lurch of his heart. He barely heard Stilgar’s voice behind him—“We are awaiting your orders, Lisan al-Gaib.”—as his eyes dropped to the floor at his feet.
The last eight months had led to this moment, this singular moment in time upon which the universe depended. Everything before was uncontested; he knew the Fremen would bow to him, Feyd-Rautha would fight him, and the emperor would kneel at his feet. Even now the old man’s silver hair glimmered at him from where he kept his head lowered, but the sight was as dull as Stilgar’s voice as Time and Space coalesced in this moment.
What had been uncontested now became contested. Future was not a fixed and decided thing; decisions, both minute and monumental, constantly changed and altered what was to come. He had not understood that before, when his visions were incomplete and unclear fragments. Since his true ascendency the fluidity of Future had become clear.
He’d told his mother of the many futures where enemies surrounded them, overcame them, and the narrow pathway through for their own victory. That future had been realized here with the emperor at his feet. He had won. His revenge was complete. This wasn’t where his story ended, though, and from here, futures branched into innumerable possibilities, all determined by the next words out of his mouth.
“Destroy the fields.” Spice leaves the universe, and the Guild collapses. Interstellar flight disappears, and everyone is stranded where they are. Uncontrollable rage builds throughout the Imperium. It takes decades, but within his lifetime, he will see the Great Houses’ atomics flying toward Arrakis, obliterating the planet.
“The Kwisatz Haderach commands it.” The Bene Gesserit rush to the ears of their lords and ladies, whispering frantically. Multiple branches stem from those whispers, but two stand out as more likely. The Houses submit, but fear and jealousy grow among them until a revolt against the entire Bene Gesserit erupts, leading to a witch hunt that decimates their order and leaves the galaxy in disarray that it never recovers from. On the other end, the Bene Gesserit make him their Father Supreme, and he one day faces his own mother with knives in their hands.
“Invite them to meet with us.” Two equally likely branches. One, the Great Houses accept the invitation. The truth of the emperor’s actions is fully revealed and believed, Paul’s strength and leadership are revered, and, with concessions for the Houses and the Guild, he is honored as Padishah Emperor. Within three weeks, his mother is dead, his sister never being born. The political machinations and manipulation don’t stop, and he is assassinated within a year. Two, the Great Houses do not accept the invitation. They destroy Arrakeen and everyone in it at this moment. Although…yes, an equally likely third branch was now blooming, borne of people’s thoughts up there, down here, or both equally. Three, the Great Houses accept the invitation. Upon landing, their treachery is revealed when their troops engage his Fremen, and more blood is spilled into the sand of Arrakeen. The Fremen win this fight, but the Great Houses are humiliated, and they return with full legions to eradicate the Fremen.
“Tell them I am Duke to two Houses.” With the Baron and na-Baron dead, along with Rabban, he swoops in to claim House Harkonnen as his own. As the voice of two Houses, Atreides the strongest and Harkonnen the wealthiest, his voice is louder than the others, and they submit to his rule within months. By that time, the Fremen have united to destroy him. They feel betrayed. They worshipped a false prophet.
“I don’t need their honor.” He declares Arrakis outside the realm of the Imperium, a free state self-governed, but holds to trade agreements for spice. So many branches from here, but two again stand out as more likely. His mother walks once more on Caladan, overlooking the crashing waves on a cliff while holding the hand of his toddler sister, only to be lost to those very waves, pushed by those they trust. The Fremen stand among the green vegetation and flowing water of an Arrakis in full bloom, only for the sietches to instigate civil war among themselves over the rights to a new plant: the splice flower.
Of all the futures flowing through Paul in that moment, the potential war among his Fremen cracked his heart, and he felt it bleeding, leaking into his chest in a pain more severe than the knife punches through his side and shoulder. He had promised to lead them to a green paradise, but bringing it to them would result in nothing but their own destruction. They were desert power, and they would destroy themselves trying to harness sea power.
His own thoughts were having a whirlpool effect on all possible futures. As his resolve hardened, reinforced by the cracking pieces of his heart falling away inside him, futures began to spin away—swallowed into the hole of Not Future, which was not unlike the great opening of Shai-Hulud’s maw—becoming fewer and fewer and fewer until only The One remained.
Somebody help me, please.
His own voice, choked with tears. It echoed from his memories, and he saw Past as clear as Future, felt it now, standing in this moment in the Present, the coppery taste of blood still at the corner of his mouth. The agonized desperation from that night in the stilltent crawled through his veins, and his throat hurt trying to hold in the same terrified plea from a boy who’d lost his father and his world to greed and jealousy and fear, a boy who refused to do the same to others.
That boy had not yet died the first time, though, when his gifted crysknife had punctured Jamis’s heart. That boy had not yet found a new world with a generous, caring people in Sietch Tabr to then see them attacked, their home destroyed because he had not seen it coming. That boy had not yet learned he was a Harkonnen. That boy had not yet stood before the Freman War Council and stirred them to belief. That boy had not yet found love to then watch her walk away because of what must be done.
I will do what must be done.
He’d said this to Chani, and her fingers had slowly fallen from his cheek, her eyes searching his to understand the deep truth in his words. He’d meant the revenge for that boy—killing the Baron and displacing the emperor for what had been done to his father and his Atreides world—but he’d also meant this moment, this pivotal breath in Space and Time.
I see a holy war spreading across the universe like unquenchable fire.
Millions and millions of people starving to death because of me.
Billions of corpses scattered across the galaxy, all dying because of me.
A war in MY NAME!
EVERYONE SHOUTING MY NAME!
This future, The One, hovered around him, awaiting the phrase spoken in this moment to come to fruition. He had fought so long, so hard, to prevent The One, but when compared to the futures of what happened to his Fremen if he didn’t choose this path…
As the tightness in his throat loosened, he did feel the taste of hope—hope that his Past self would understand what drove him now. If he were to choose between the billions of people across the Imperium and the millions here on Arrakis who believed in him, who looked to him as their savior, their hope (however heartbreakingly that hope was created), that choice didn’t truly exist. There was no choice anymore.
His heart cracked a little more, bigger pieces falling away, as he looked into his Past self’s dread-filled eyes, lashes clumped with tears. “No,” Past whispered to him across Time. “This is still a choice you’re making, Paul Muad’Dib. You’ve seen the alternatives; you’ve seen other futures that could work. You can help yourself now. But you’re choosing to begin the holy war. You’re choosing to be what Reverand Mother Mohiam named you.”
Abomination.
His Past self was swept away in the old nightmare, a wave of people strewn across a hot desert floor, wasting away in their silent screams. A bloody hand glinted in the sunlight. His resolve weakened a touch, and more futures began to blossom again, unfurling against The One, showing him truth: more narrow paths leading to a green paradise on Arrakis, some narrower paths within those paths leading to prosperity and richness for the Fremen but more, bigger paths leading to bloodshed and destruction. All began with a single phrase uttered right now: “Bring them to me.”
Chani had walked away, but as he’d once told his mother, she would come to understand. Through the horrors of The One, she would also…Chani on Caladan, submerging in water, gasping when she breaks the surface, laughing as he pulls her slick body against his. “I believe you,” she whispers in his ear before their lips come together. On the other side of the cliff, a battle rages, the Atreides flag flying, but this moment…. He stops kissing her, his open mouth still pressed to hers as he whispers, “As long as I breathe.”
Paul breathed. The futures became opaque as he focused on the Present.
One last breath of time. One last terrible second to make his decision.
The rush left him. His heart calmed. Only the inescapable feeling of inevitably remained, and with it…
Acceptance.
Abomination.
His lips parted, and acceptance couldn’t keep the sadness from his voice.
“Lead them to Paradise.”