The ceremony of “Showing” by which the rebels began their meetings dragged on interminably for Siona. She sat in the front row and looked everywhere but at Topri, who was conducting the ceremony only a few paces away. This room in the service burrows beneath Onn was one they had never used before but it was so like all of their other meeting places that it could have been used as a standard model.
It was officially designated as a storage chamber and the fixed glowglobes could not be tuned away from their blank white glaring. The room was about thirty paces long and slightly less in width. It could be reached only through a labyrinthine series of similar chambers, one of which was conveniently stocked with a supply of stiff folding chairs intended for the small sleeping chambers of the service personnel. Nineteen of Siona’s fellow rebels now occupied these chairs around her, with a few empty for any latecomers who might still make the meeting.
The time had been set between the midnight and morning shifts to mask the flow of extra people in the service warrens. Most of the rebels wore energy-worker disguises—thin gray disposable trousers and jackets. Some few, including Siona, were garbed in the green of machinery inspectors.
Topri’s voice was an insistent monotone in the room. He did not squeak at all while conducting the ceremony. In fact, Siona had to admit he was rather good at it, especially with new recruits. Since Nayla’s flat statement that she did not trust the man, though, Siona had looked at Topri in a different way. Nayla could speak with a cutting naiveté which pulled away masks. And there were things that Siona had learned about Topri since that confrontation.
Siona turned at last and looked at the man. The cold silvery light did not help Topri’s pale skin. He used a copy of a crysknife in the ceremony, a contraband copy bought from the Museum Fremen. Siona recalled the transaction as she looked at the blade in Topri’s hands. It had been Topri’s idea, and she had thought it a good one at the time. He had led her to the rendezvous in a hovel on the city’s outskirts, leaving Onn just at dusk. They had waited well into the night until darkness could mask the Museum Fremen’s coming. Fremen were not supposed to leave their sietch quarters without a special dispensation from the God Emperor.
She had almost given up on him when the Fremen arrived, slipping in out of the night, his escort left behind to guard the door. Topri and Siona had been waiting on a crude bench against a dank wall of the absolutely plain room. The only light had come from a dim yellow torch supported on a stick driven into the crumbling mud wall.
The Fremen’s first words had filled Siona with misgivings.
“Have you brought the money?”
Both Topri and Siona had risen at his entry. Topri did not appear bothered by the question. He tapped the pouch beneath his robe, making it jingle.
“I have the money right here.”
The Fremen was a wizened figure, crabbed and bent, wearing a copy of the old Fremen robes and some glistening garment underneath, probably their version of a stillsuit. His hood was drawn forward, shading his features. The torchlight sent shadows dancing across his face.
He peered first at Topri then at Siona before removing an object wrapped in cloth from beneath his robe.
“It is a true copy, but it is made of plastic,” he said. “It will not cut cold grease.”
He pulled the blade from its wrappings then and held it up.
Siona, who had seen crysknives only in museums and in the rare old visual recordings of her family’s archives, had found herself oddly gripped by the sight of the blade in this setting. She felt something atavistic working on her and imagined this poor Museum Fremen with his plastic crysknife as a real Fremen of the old days. The thing he held was suddenly a silver-bladed crysknife shimmering in the yellow shadows.
“I guarantee the authenticity of the blade from which we copied it,” the Fremen said. He spoke in a low voice, somehow made menacing by its lack of emphasis.
Siona heard it then, the way he carried his venom in a sleeve of soft vowels and she was suddenly alerted.
“Try treachery and we will hunt you down like vermin,” she said.
Topri shot a startled glance at her.
The Museum Fremen appeared to shrivel, drawing in upon himself. The blade trembled in his hand, but his gnome fingers still curled inward around it as though clasping a throat.
“Treachery, Lady? Oh, no. But it occurred to us that we asked too little for this copy. Poor as it is, making it and selling it this way puts us in dreadful peril.”
Siona glared at him, thinking of the old Fremen words from the Oral History:
“How much do you want?” she demanded.
He named a sum twice his original figure.
Topri gasped.
Siona looked at Topri. “Do you have that much?”
