Heretics of Dune

Frank Herbert

 

 

 

 

April 1984

When I was writing Dune

. . . there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or

failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had

preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of

the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had

never before experienced.

It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.

It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.

It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics.

It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.

It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through

dependence on such a substance.

Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water itself, a substance

whose supply diminishes each day.

It was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story

about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor

each of these levels at every stage in the book.

There wasn't room in my head to think about much else.

Following the first publication, reports from the publishers were slow and, as

it turned out, inaccurate. The critics had panned it. More than twelve

publishers had turned it down before publication. There was no advertising.

Something was happening out there, though.

For two years, I was swamped with bookstore and reader complaints that they

could not get the book. The Whole Earth Catalog praised it. I kept getting

these telephone calls from people asking me if I were starting a cult.

The answer: "God no!"

What I'm describing is the slow realization of success. By the time the first

three Dune books were completed, there was little doubt that this was a popular

work -- one of the most popular in history, I am told, with some ten million

copies sold worldwide. Now the most common question people ask is: "What does

this success mean to you?"

It surprises me. I didn't expect failure either. It was a work and I did it.

Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was

completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story

remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing. The success meant I could

spend more time writing.

Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don't

write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If

you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a

bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that

person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

That was really my intention all along.

Frank Herbert

Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do

not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How?

traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.

-The Apocrypha of Arrakis

"Taraza told you, did she not, that we have gone through eleven of these Duncan

Idaho gholas? This one is the twelfth."

The old Reverend Mother Schwangyu spoke with deliberate bitterness as she looked

down from the third-story parapet at the lone child playing on the enclosed

lawn. The planet Gammu's bright midday sunlight bounced off the white courtyard

walls filling the area beneath them with brilliance as though a spotlight had

been directed onto the young ghola.

Gone through! the Reverend Mother Lucilla thought. She allowed herself a short

nod, thinking how coldly impersonal were Schwangyu's manner and choice of words.

We have used up our supply; send us more!

The child on the lawn appeared to be about twelve standard years of age, but

appearance could be deceptive with a ghola not yet awakened to his original

memories. The child took that moment to look up at the watchers above him. He

was a sturdy figure with a direct gaze that focused intently from beneath a

black cap of karakul hair. The yellow sunlight of early spring cast a small

shadow at his feet. His skin was darkly tanned but a slight movement of his

body shifted his blue singlesuit, revealing pale skin at the left shoulder.

"Not only are these gholas costly but they are supremely dangerous to us,"

Schwangyu said. Her voice came out flat and emotionless, all the more powerful

because of that. It was the voice of a Reverend Mother Instructor speaking down

to an acolyte and it emphasized for Lucilla that Schwangyu was one of those who

protested openly against the ghola project.

Taraza had warned: "She will try to win you over."

"Eleven failures are enough," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla glanced at Schwangyu's wrinkled features, thinking suddenly: Someday I

may be old and wizened, too. And perhaps I will be a power in the Bene Gesserit

as well.

Schwangyu was a small woman with many age marks earned in the Sisterhood's

affairs. Lucilla knew from her own

assignment-studies that Schwangyu's conventional black robe concealed a skinny

figure that few other than her acolyte dressers and the males bred to her had

ever seen. Schwangyu's mouth was wide, the lower lip constricted by the age

lines that fanned into a jutting chin. Her manner tended to a curt abruptness

that the uninitiated often interpreted as anger. The commander of the Gammu

Keep was one who kept herself to herself more than most Reverend Mothers.

Once more, Lucilla wished she knew the entire scope of the ghola project.

Taraza had drawn the dividing line clearly enough, though: "Schwangyu is not to

be trusted where the safety of the ghola is concerned."

"We think the Tleilaxu themselves killed most of the previous eleven," Schwangyu

said. "That in itself should tell us something."

Matching Schwangyu's manner, Lucilla adopted a quiet attitude of almost

emotionless waiting. Her manner said: "I may be much younger than you,

Schwangyu, but I, too, am a full Reverend Mother." She could feel Schwangyu's

gaze.

Schwangyu had seen the holos of this Lucilla but the woman in the flesh was more

disconcerting. An Imprinter of the best training, no doubt of it. Blue-in-blue

eyes uncorrected by any lens gave Lucilla a piercing expression that went with

her long oval face. With the hood of her black aba robe thrown back as it was

now, brown hair was revealed, drawn into a tight barette and then cascading down

her back. Not even the stiffest robe could completely hide Lucilla's ample

breasts. She was from a genetic line famous for its motherly nature and she

already had borne three children for the Sisterhood, two by the same sire. Yes

-- a brown-haired charmer with full breasts and a motherly disposition.

"You say very little," Schwangyu said. "This tells me that Taraza has warned

you against me."

"Do you have reason to believe assassins will try to kill this twelfth ghola?"

Lucilla asked.

"They already have tried."

Strange how the word "heresy" came to mind when thinking of Schwangyu, Lucilla

thought. Could there be heresy among the Reverend Mothers? The religious

overtones of the word seemed out of place in a Bene Gesserit context. How could

there be heretical movements among people who held a profoundly manipulative

attitude toward all things religious?

Lucilla shifted her attention down to the ghola, who took this moment to perform

a series of cartwheels that brought him around full circle until he once more

stood looking up at the two observers on the parapet.

"How prettily he performs!" Schwangyu sneered. The old voice did not completely

mask an underlying violence.

Lucilla glanced at Schwangyu. Heresy. Dissidence was not the proper word.

Opposition did not cover what could be sensed in the older woman. This was

something that could shatter the Bene Gesserit. Revolt against Taraza, against

the Reverend Mother Superior? Unthinkable! Mother Superiors were cast in the

mold of monarch. Once Taraza had accepted counsel and advice and then made her

decision, the Sisters were committed to obedience.

"This is no time to be creating new problems!" Schwangyu said.

Her meaning was clear. People from the Scattering were coming back and the

intent of some among those Lost Ones threatened the Sisterhood. Honored Matres!

How like "Reverend Mothers" the words sounded.

Lucilla ventured an exploratory sally: "So you think we should be concentrating

on the problem of those Honored Matres from the Scattering?"

"Concentrating? Hah! They do not have our powers. They do not show good

sense. And they do not have mastery of melange! That is what they want from

us, our spice knowledge."

"Perhaps," Lucilla agreed. She was not willing to concede this on the scanty

evidence.

"Mother Superior Taraza has taken leave of her senses to dally with this ghola

thing now," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla remained silent. The ghola project definitely had touched an old nerve

among the Sisters. The possibility, even remote, that they might arouse another

Kwisatz Haderach sent shudders of angry fear through the ranks. To meddle with

the worm-bound remnants of the Tyrant! That was dangerous in the extreme.

"We should never take that ghola to Rakis," Schwangyu muttered. "Let sleeping

worms lie."

Lucilla gave her attention once more to the ghola-child. He had turned his back

on the high parapet with its two Reverend Mothers, but something about his

posture said he knew they discussed him and he awaited their response.

"You doubtless realize that you have been called in while he is yet too young,"

Schwangyu said.

"I have never heard of the deep imprinting on one that young," Lucilla agreed.

She allowed something softly self-mocking in her tone, a thing she knew

Schwangyu would hear and misinterpret. The management of procreation and all of

its attendant necessities, that was the Bene Gesserit ultimate specialty. Use

love but avoid it, Schwangyu would be thinking now. The Sisterhood's analysts

knew the roots of love. They had examined this quite early in their development

but had never dared breed it out of those they influenced. Tolerate love but

guard against it, that was the rule. Know that it lay deep within the human

genetic makeup, a safety net to insure continuation of the species. You used it

where necessary, imprinting selected individuals (sometimes upon each other) for

the Sisterhood's purposes, knowing then that such individuals would be linked by

powerful bonding lines not readily available to the common awareness. Others

might observe such links and plot the consequences but the linked ones would

dance to unconscious music.

"I was not suggesting that it's a mistake to imprint him," Schwangyu said,

misreading Lucilla's silence.

"We do what we are ordered to do," Lucilla chided. Let Schwangyu make of that

what she would.

"Then you do not object to taking the ghola to Rakis," Schwangyu said. "I

wonder if you would continue such unquestioning obedience if you knew the full

story?"

Lucilla inhaled a deep breath. Was the entire design for the Duncan Idaho

gholas to be shared with her now?

"There is a female child named Sheeana Brugh on Rakis," Schwangyu said. "She

can control the giant worms."

Lucilla concealed her alertness. Giant worms. Not Shai-hulud. Not Shaitan.

Giant worms. The sandrider predicted by the Tyrant had appeared at last!

"I do not make idle chatter," Schwangyu said when Lucilla continued silent.

Indeed not, Lucilla thought. And you call a thing by its descriptive label, not

by the name of its mystical import. Giant worms. And you're really thinking

about the Tyrant, Leto II, whose endless dream is carried as a pearl of

awareness in each of those worms. Or so we are led to believe.

Schwangyu nodded toward the child on the lawn below them. "Do you think their

ghola will be able to influence the girl who controls the worms?"

We're peeling away the skin at last, Lucilla thought. She said: "I have no

need for the answer to such a question."

"You are a cautious one," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla arched her back and stretched. Cautious? Yes, indeed! Taraza had

warned her: "Where Schwangyu is concerned, you must act with extreme caution

but with speed. We have a very narrow window of time within which we can

succeed."

Succeed at what? Lucilla wondered. She glanced sideways at Schwangyu. "I

don't see how the Tleilaxu could succeed in killing eleven of these gholas. How

could they get through our defenses?"

"We have the Bashar now," Schwangyu said. "Perhaps he can prevent disaster."

Her tone said she did not believe this.

Mother Superior Taraza had said: "You are the Imprinter, Lucilla. When you get

to Gammu you will recognize some of the pattern. But for your task you have no

need for the full design."

"Think of the cost!" Schwangyu said, glaring down at the ghola, who now

squatted, pulling at tufts of grass.

Cost had nothing to do with it, Lucilla knew. The open admission of failure was

much more important. The Sisterhood could not reveal its fallibility. But the

fact that an Imprinter had been summoned early -- that was vital. Taraza had

known the Imprinter would see this and recognize part of the pattern.

Schwangyu gestured with one bony hand at the child, who had returned to his

solitary play, running and tumbling on the grass.

"Politics," Schwangyu said.

No doubt Sisterhood politics lay at the core of Schwangyu's heresy, Lucilla

thought. The delicacy of the internal argument could be deduced from the fact

that Schwangyu had been put in charge of the Keep here on Gammu. Those who

opposed Taraza refused to sit on the sidelines.

Schwangyu turned and looked squarely at Lucilla. Enough had been said. Enough

had been heard and screened through minds trained in Bene Gesserit awareness.

The Chapter House had chosen this Lucilla with great care.

Lucilla felt the older woman's careful examination but refused to let this touch

that innermost sense of purpose upon which every Reverend Mother could rely in

times of stress. Here. Get her look fully upon me. Lucilla turned and set her

mouth in a soft smile, passing her gaze across the rooftop opposite them.

A uniformed man armed with a heavy-duty lasgun appeared there, looked once at

the two Reverend Mothers and then focused on the child below them.

"Who is that?" Lucilla asked

"Patrin, the Bashar's most trusted aide. Says he's only the Bashar's batman but

you'd have to be blind and a fool to believe that. "

Lucilla examined the man across from them with care. So that was Patrin. A

native of Gammu, Taraza had said. Chosen for this task by the Bashar himself.

Thin and blond, much too old now to be soldiering, but then the Bashar had been

called back from retirement and had insisted Patrin must share this duty.

Schwangyu noted the way Lucilla shifted her attention from Patrin to the ghola

with real concern. Yes, if the Bashar had been called back to guard this Keep,

then the ghola was in extreme peril.

Lucilla started in sudden surprise. "Why . . . he's . . ."

"Miles Teg's orders," Schwangyu said, naming the Bashar. "All of the ghola's

play is training play. Muscles are to be prepared for the day when he is

restored to his original self."

"But that's no simple exercise he's doing down there," Lucilla said. She felt

her own muscles respond sympathetically to the remembered training.

"We hold back only the Sisterhood's arcana from this ghola," Schwangyu said.

"Almost anything else in our storehouse of knowledge can be his." Her tone said

she found this extremely objectionable.

"Surely, no one believes this ghola could become another Kwisatz Haderach,"

Lucilla objected.

Schwangyu merely shrugged.

Lucilla held herself quite still, thinking. Was it possible the ghola could be

transformed into a male version of a Reverend Mother? Could this Duncan Idaho

learn to look inward where no Reverend Mother dared?

Schwangyu began to speak, her voice almost a growling mutter: "The design of

this project . . . they have a dangerous plan. They could make the same mistake

. . ." She broke off.

They, Lucilla thought. Their ghola.

"I would give anything to know for sure the position of Ix and the Fish Speakers

in this," Lucilla said.

"Fish Speakers!" Schwangyu shook her head at the very thought of the remnant

female army that had once served only the Tyrant. "They believe in truth and

justice."

Lucilla overcame a sudden tightness in her throat. Schwangyu had all but

declared open opposition. Yet, she commanded here. The political rule was a

simple one: Those who opposed the project must monitor it that they might abort

it at the first sign of trouble. But that was a genuine Duncan Idaho ghola down

there on the lawn. Cell comparisons and Truthsayers had confirmed it.

Taraza had said: "You are to teach him love in all of its forms."

"He's so young," Lucilla said, keeping her attention on the ghola.

"Young, yes," Schwangyu said. "So, for now, I presume you will awaken his

childish responses to maternal affection. Later . . ." Schwangyu shrugged.

Lucilla betrayed no emotional reaction. A Bene Gesserit obeyed. I am an

Imprinter. So . . . Taraza's orders and the Imprinter's specialized training

defined a particular course of events.

To Schwangyu, Lucilla said: "There is someone who looks like me and speaks with

my voice. I am Imprinting for her. May I ask who that is?"

"No."

Lucilla held her silence. She had not expected revelation but it had been

remarked more than once that she bore a striking resemblance to Senior Security

Mother Darwi Odrade. "A young Odrade." Lucilla had heard this on several

occasions. Both Lucilla and Odrade were, of course, in the Atreides line with a

strong backbreeding from Siona descendants. The Fish Speakers had no monopoly

on those genes! But the Other Memories of a Reverend Mother, even with their

linear selectivity and confinement to the female side, provided important clues

to the broad shape of the ghola project. Lucilla, who had come to depend on her

experiences of the Jessica persona buried some five thousand years back in the

Sisterhood's genetic manipulations, felt a deep sense of dread from that source

now. There was a familiar pattern here. It gave off such an intense feeling of

doom that Lucilla fell automatically into the Litany Against Fear as she had

been taught it in her first introduction to the Sisterhood's rites:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that

brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over

me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see

its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Calm returned to Lucilla.

Schwangyu, sensing some of this, allowed her guard to drop slightly. Lucilla

was no dullard, no special Reverend Mother with an empty title and barely

sufficient background to function without embarrassing the Sisterhood. Lucilla

was the real thing and some reactions could not be hidden from her, not even

reactions of another Reverend Mother. Very well, let her know the full extent

of the opposition to this foolish, this dangerous project!

"I do not think their ghola will survive to see Rakis," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla let this pass. "Tell me about his friends," she said.

"He has no friends; only teachers."

"When will I meet them?" She kept her gaze on the opposite parapet where Patrin

leaned idly-against a low pillar, his heavy lasgun at the ready. Lucilla

realized with an abrupt shock that Patrin was watching her. Patrin was a

message from the Bashar! Schwangyu obviously saw and understood. We guard him!

"I presume it's Miles Teg you're so anxious to meet," Schwangyu said.

"Among others."

"Don't you want to make contact with the ghola first?"

"I've already made contact with him." Lucilla nodded toward the enclosed yard

where the child once more stood almost motionless and looking up at her. "He's

a thoughtful one."

"I've only the reports on the others," Schwangyu said, "but I suspect this is

the most thoughtful one of the series."

Lucilla suppressed an involuntary shudder at the readiness for violent

opposition in Schwangyu's words and attitude. There was not one hint that the

child below them shared a common humanity.

While Lucilla was thinking this, clouds covered the sun as they often did here

at this hour. A cold wind blew in over the Keep's walls, swirling around the

courtyard. The child turned away and picked up the speed of his exercises,

getting his warmth from increased activity.

"Where does he go to be alone?" Lucilla asked.

"Mostly to his room. He has tried a few dangerous escapades, but we have

discouraged this."

"He must hate us very much."

"I'm sure of it."

"I will have to deal with that directly."

"Surely, an Imprinter has no doubts about her ability to overcome hate."

"I was thinking of Geasa." Lucilla sent a knowing look at Schwangyu. "I find

it astonishing that you let Geasa make such a mistake."

"I don't interfere with the normal progress of the ghola's instructions. If one

of his teachers develops a real affection for him, that is not my problem."

"An attractive child," Lucilla said.

They stood a bit longer watching the Duncan Idaho ghola at his training-play.

Both Reverend Mothers thought briefly of Geasa, one of the first teachers

brought here for the ghola project. Schwangyu's attitude was plain: Geasa was

a providential failure. Lucilla thought only: Schwangyu and Geasa complicated

my task. Neither woman gave even a passing moment to the way these thoughts

reaffirmed their loyalties.

As she watched the child in the courtyard, Lucilla began to have a new

appreciation of what the Tyrant God Emperor had actually achieved. Leto II had

employed this ghola-type through uncounted lifetimes -- some thirty-five hundred

years of them, one after another. And the God Emperor Leto II had been no

ordinary force of nature. He had been the biggest juggernaut in human history,

rolling over everything: over social systems, over natural and unnatural

hatreds, over governmental forms, over rituals (both taboo and mandatory), over

religions casual and religions intense. The crushing weight of the Tyrant's

passage had left nothing unmarked, not even the Bene Gesserit.

Leto II had called it "The Golden Path" and this Duncan Idaho-type ghola below

her now had figured prominently in that awesome passage. Lucilla had studied

the Bene Gesserit accounts, probably the best in the universe. Even today on

most of the old Imperial Planets, newly married couples still scattered dollops

of water east and west, mouthing the local version of "Let Thy blessings flow

back to us from this offering, O God of Infinite Power and Infinite Mercy."

Once, it had been the task of Fish Speakers and their tame priesthood to enforce

such obeisance. But the thing had developed its own momentum, becoming a

pervasive compulsion. Even the most doubting of believers said: "Well, it can

do no harm." It was an accomplishment that the finest religious engineers of

the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva admired with frustrated awe. The

Tyrant had surpassed the Bene Gesserit best. And fifteen hundred years since

the Tyrant's death, the Sisterhood remained powerless to unlock the central knot

of that fearsome accomplishment.

"Who has charge of the child's religious training?" Lucilla asked.

"No one," Schwangyu said. "Why bother? If he is reawakened to his original

memories, he will have his own ideas. We will deal with those if we ever have

to."

The child below them completed his allotted training time. Without another look

up at the watchers on the parapet, he left the enclosed yard and entered a wide

doorway on the left. Patrin, too, abandoned his guard position without glancing

at the two Reverend Mothers.

"Don't be fooled by Teg's people," Schwangyu said. "They have eyes in the backs

of their heads. Teg's birth-mother, you know, was one of us. He is teaching

that ghola things better never shared!"

Explosions are also compressions of time. Observable changes in the natural

universe all are explosive to some degree and from some point of view; otherwise

you would not notice them. Smooth Continuity of change, if slowed sufficiently,

goes without notice by observers whose time/attention span is too short. Thus,

I tell you, I have seen changes you would never have marked.

-Leto II

The woman standing in Chapter House Planet's morning light across the table from

the Reverend Mother Superior Alma Mavis Taraza was tall and supple. The long

aba robe that encased her in shimmering black from shoulders to floor did not

completely conceal the grace with which her body expressed every movement.

Taraza leaned forward in her chairdog and scanned the Records Relay projecting

its condensed Bene Gesserit glyphs above the tabletop for her eyes only.

"Darwi Odrade," the display identified the standing woman, and then came the

essential biography, which Taraza already knew in detail. The display served

several purposes -- it provided a secure reminder for the Mother Superior, it

allowed an occasional delay for thought while she appeared to scan the records,

and it was a final argument should something negative arise from this interview.

Odrade had borne nineteen children for the Bene Gesserit, Taraza observed as the

information scrolled past her eyes. Each child by a different father. Not much

unusual about that, but even the most searching gaze could see that this

essential service to the Sisterhood had not grossened Odrade's flesh. Her

features conveyed a natural hauteur in the long nose and the complementary

angular cheeks. Every feature focused downward to a narrow chin: Her mouth,

though, was full and promised a passion that she was careful to bridle.

We can always depend on the Atreides genes, Taraza thought. A window curtain

fluttered behind Odrade and she glanced back at it. They were in Taraza's

morning room, a small and elegantly furnished space decorated in shades of

green. Only the stark white of Taraza's chairdog separated her from the

background. The room's bow windows looked eastward onto garden and lawn with

faraway snowy mountains of Chapter House Planet as backdrop.

Without looking up, Taraza said: "I was glad when both you and Lucilla accepted

the assignment. It makes my task much easier."

"I would like to have met this Lucilla," Odrade said, looking down at the top of

Taraza's head. Odrade's voice came out a soft contralto.

Taraza cleared her throat. "No need. Lucilla is one of our finest Imprinters.

Each of you, of course, received the identical liberal conditioning to prepare

you for this."

There was something almost insulting in Taraza's casual tone and only the habits

of long association put down Odrade's immediate resentment. It was partly that

word "liberal," she realized. Atreides ancestors rose up in rebellion at the

word. It was as though her accumulated female memories lashed out at the

unconscious assumptions and unexamined prejudices behind the concept.

"Only liberals really think. Only liberals are intellectual. Only liberals

understand the needs of their fellows."

How much viciousness lay concealed in that word! Odrade thought. How much

secret ego demanding to feel superior.

Odrade reminded herself that Taraza, despite the casually insulting tone, had

used the term only in its catholic sense: Lucilla's generalized education had

been carefully matched to that of Odrade.

Taraza leaned back into a more comfortable position but still kept her attention

on the display in front of her. The light from the eastern windows fell

directly on her face, leaving shadows beneath nose and chin. A small woman just

a bit older than Odrade, Taraza retained much of the beauty that had made her a

most reliable breeder with difficult sires. Her face was a long oval with soft

curved cheeks. She wore her black hair drawn back tightly from a high forehead

with a pronounced peak. Taraza's mouth opened minimally when she spoke: superb

control of movement. An observer's attention tended to focus on her eyes: that

compelling blue-in-blue. The total effect was of a suave facial mask from which

little escaped to betray her true emotions.

Odrade recognized this present pose in the Mother Superior. Taraza would mutter

to herself presently. Indeed, right on cue, Taraza muttered to herself.

The Mother Superior was thinking while she followed the biographical display

with great attention. Many matters occupied her attention.

This was a reassuring thought to Odrade. Taraza did not believe there was any

such thing as a beneficent power guarding humankind. The Missionaria Protectiva

and the intentions of the Sisterhood counted for everything in Taraza's

universe. Whatever served those intentions, even the machinations of the longdead

Tyrant, could be judged good. All else was evil. Alien intrusions from

the Scattering -- especially those returning descendants who called themselves

"Honored Matres" -- were not to be trusted. Taraza's own people, even those

Reverend Mothers who opposed her in Council, were the ultimate Bene Gesserit

resource, the only thing that could be trusted.

Still without looking up, Taraza said: "Do you know that when you compare the

millennia preceding the Tyrant with those after his death, the decrease in major

conflicts is phenomenal. Since the Tyrant, the number of such conflicts has

dropped to less than two percent of what it was before."

"As far as we know," Odrade said.

Taraza's gaze flicked upward and then down. "What?"

"We have no way of telling how many wars have been fought outside our ken. Have

you statistics from the people of the Scattering?"

"Of course not!" `

"Leto tamed us is what you're saying," Odrade said.

"If you care to put it that way." Taraza inserted a marker in something she saw

on her display.

"Shouldn't some of the credit go to our beloved Bashar Miles Teg?" Odrade

asked. "Or to his talented predecessors?"

"We chose those people," Taraza said.

"I don't see the pertinence of this martial discussion," Odrade said. "What

does it have to do with our present problem?"

"There are some who think we may revert to the pre-Tyrant condition with a very

nasty bang."

"Oh?" Odrade pursed her lips.

"Several groups among our returning Lost Ones are selling arms to anyone who

wants to or can buy."

"Specifics?" Odrade asked.

"Sophisticated arms are flooding onto Gammu and there can be little doubt the

Tleilaxu are stockpiling some of the nastier weapons."

Taraza leaned back and rubbed her temples. She spoke in a low, almost musing

voice. "We think we make decisions of the greatest moment and out of the very

highest principles."

Odrade had seen this before, too. She said: "Does the Mother Superior doubt

the rightness of the Bene Gesserit?"

"Doubt? Oh, no. But I do experience frustration. We work all of our lives for

these highly refined goals and in the end, what do we find? We find that many

of the things to which we have dedicated our lives came from petty decisions.

They can be traced to desires for personal comfort or convenience and had

nothing at all to do with our high ideals. What really was at stake was some

worldly working agreement that satisfied the needs of those who could make the

decisions."

"I've heard you call that political necessity," Odrade said.

Taraza spoke with tight control while returning her attention to the display in

front of her. "If we become institutionalized in our judgments, that's a sure

way to extinguish the Bene Gesserit."

"You will not find petty decisions in my bio," Odrade said.

"I look for sources of weakness, for flaws."

"You won't find those, either."

Taraza concealed a smile. She recognized this egocentric remark: Odrade's way

of needling the Mother Superior. Odrade was very good at seeming to be

impatient while actually suspending herself in a timeless flow of patience.

When Taraza did not rise to the bait, Odrade resumed her calm waiting -- easy

breaths, the mind steady. Patience came without thinking of it. The Sisterhood

had taught her long ago how to divide past and present into simultaneous

flowings. While observing her immediate surroundings, she could pick up bits

and pieces of her past and live through them as though they moved across a

screen superimposed over the present.

Memory work, Odrade thought. Necessary things to haul out and lay to rest.

Removing the barriers. When all else palled, there was still her tangled

childhood.

There had been a time when Odrade lived as most children lived: in a house with

a man and woman who, if not her parents, certainly acted in loco parentis. All

of the other children she knew then lived in similar situations. They had papas

and mamas. Sometimes only papa worked away from home. Sometimes only mama went

out to her labors. In Odrade's case, the woman remained at home and no creche

nurse guarded the child in the working hours. Much later, Odrade learned that

her birth-mother had given a large sum of money to provide this for the infant

female hidden in plain sight that way.

"She hid you with us because she loved you," the woman explained when Odrade was

old enough to understand. "That is why you must never reveal that we are not

your real parents."

Love had nothing to do with it, Odrade learned later. Reverend Mothers did not

act from such mundane motives. And Odrade's birth-mother had been a Bene

Gesserit Sister.

All of this was revealed to Odrade according to the original plan. Her name:

Odrade. Darwi was what she had always been called when the caller was not being

endearing or angry. Young friends naturally shortened it to Dar.

Everything, however, did not go according to the original plan. Odrade recalled

a narrow bed in a room brightened by paintings of animals and fantasy landscapes

on the pastel blue walls. White curtains fluttered at the window in the soft

breezes of spring and summer. Odrade remembered jumping on the narrow bed -- a

marvelously happy game: up, down, up, down. Much laughter. Arms caught her in

mid leap and hugged her close. They were a man's arms: a round face with a

small mustache that tickled her into giggles. The bed thumped the wall when she

jumped and the wall revealed indentations from this movement.

Odrade played over this memory now, reluctant to discard it into the well of

rationality. Marks on a wall. Marks of laughter and joy. How small they were

to represent so much.

Odd how she had been thinking more and more about papa recently. All of the

memories were not happy. There had been times when he had been sad-angry,

warning mama not to become "too involved." He had a face that reflected many

frustrations. His voice barked when he was in his angry mood. Mama moved

softly then, her eyes full of worry. Odrade sensed the worry and the fear and

resented the man. The woman knew best how to deal with him. She kissed the

nape of his neck, stroked his cheek and whispered into his ear.

These ancient "natural" emotions had engaged a Bene Gesserit analyst-proctor in

much work with Odrade before they were exorcised. But even now there was

residual detritus to pick up and discard. Even now, Odrade knew that all of it

was not gone.

Seeing the way Taraza studied the biographical record with such care, Odrade

wondered if that was the flaw the Mother Superior saw.

Surely they know by now that I can deal with the emotions of those early times.

It was all so long ago. Still, she had to admit that the memory of the man and

woman lay within her, bonded with such force that it might never be erased

completely. Especially mama.

The Reverend Mother in extremis who had borne Odrade had put her in that hiding

place on Gammu for reasons Odrade now understood quite well. Odrade harbored no

resentments. It had been necessary for the survival of them both. Problems

arose from the fact that the foster mother gave Odrade that thing which most

mothers give their children, that thing which the Sisterhood so distrusted --

love.

When the Reverend Mothers came, the foster mother had not fought the removal of

her child. Two Reverend Mothers came with a contingent of male and female

proctors. Afterward Odrade was a long time understanding the significance of

that wrenching moment. The woman had known in her heart that the day of parting

would come. Only a matter of time. Still, as the days became years -- almost

six standards of years -- the woman had dared to hope.

Then the Reverend Mothers came with their burly attendants. They had merely

been waiting until it was safe, until they were sure no hunters knew this was a

Bene Gesserit-planned Atreides scion.

Odrade saw a great deal of money passed to the foster mother. The woman threw

the money on the floor. But no voice was raised in objection. The adults in

the scene knew where the power lay.

Calling up those compressed emotions, Odrade could still see the woman take

herself to a straight-backed chair beside the window onto the street, there to

hug herself and rock back and forth, back and forth. Not a sound from her.

The Reverend Mothers used Voice and their considerable wiles plus the smoke of

drugging herbs and their overpowering presence to lure Odrade into their waiting

groundcar.

"It will be just for a little while. Your real mother sent us."

Odrade sensed the lies but curiosity compelled. My real mother!

Her last view of the woman who had been her only known female parent was of that

figure at the window rocking back and forth, a look of misery on her face, arms

wrapped around herself.

Later, when Odrade spoke of returning to the woman, that memory-vision was

incorporated into an essential Bene Gesserit lesson.

"Love leads to misery. Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose

in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species. Remember

that woman's mistake, the pain."

Until well into her teens, Odrade adjusted by daydreaming. She would really

return after she was a full Reverend Mother. She would go back and find that

loving woman, find her even though she had no names except "mama" and "Sibia."

Odrade recalled the laughter of adult friends who had called the woman "Sibia."

Mama Sibia.

The Sisters, however, detected the daydreams and searched out their source.

That, too, was incorporated into a lesson.

"Daydreaming is the first awakening of what we call simulflow. It is an

essential tool of rational thought. With it you can clear the mind for better

thinking."

Simulflow.

Odrade focused on Taraza at the morning room table. Childhood trauma must be

placed carefully into a reconstructed memory-place. All of that had been far

away on Gammu, the planet that the people of Dan had rebuilt after the Famine

Times and the Scattering. The people of Dan -- Caladan in those days. Odrade

took a firm grip on rational thought, using the stance of the Other Memories

that had flooded into her awareness during the spice agony when she had really

become a full Reverend Mother.

Simulflow . . . the filter of consciousness . . . Other Memories.

What powerful tools the Sisterhood had given her. What dangerous tools. All of

those other lives lay there just beyond the curtain of awareness, tools of

survival, not a way to satisfy casual curiosity.

Taraza spoke, translating from the material that scrolled past her eyes: "You

dig too much in your Other Memories. That drains away energies better

conserved."

The Mother Superior's blue-in-blue eyes sent a piercing stare upward at Odrade.

"You sometimes go right to the edge of fleshly tolerance. That can lead to your

premature death."

"I am careful with the spice, Mother."

"And well you should be! A body can take only so much melange, only so much

prowling in its past!"

"Have you found my flaw?" Odrade asked.

"Gammu!" One word but an entire harangue.

Odrade knew. The unavoidable trauma of those lost years on Gammu. They were a

distraction that had to be rooted out and made rationally acceptable.

"But I am sent to Rakis," Odrade said.

"And see that you remember the aphorisms of moderation. Remember who you are!"

Once more, Taraza bent to her display.

I am Odrade, Odrade thought.

In the Bene Gesserit schools where first names tended to slip away, roll call

was by last name. Friends and acquaintances picked up the habit of using the

roll-call name. They learned early that sharing secret or private names was an

ancient device for ensnaring a person in affections.

Taraza, three classes ahead of Odrade, had been assigned to "bring the younger

girl along," a deliberate association by watchful teachers.

"Bringing along" meant a certain amount of lording it over the younger but also

incorporated essentials better taught by someone closer to peer relationship.

Taraza, with access to the private records of her trainee, started calling the

younger girl "Dar." Odrade responded by calling Taraza "Tar." The two names

acquired a certain glue -- Dar and Tar. Even after Reverend Mothers overheard

and reprimanded them, they occasionally lapsed into error if only for the

amusement.

Odrade, looking down at Taraza now, said: "Dar and Tar."

A smile twitched the edges of Taraza's mouth.

"What is it in my records that you don't already know several times over?"

Odrade asked.

Taraza sat back and waited for the chairdog to adjust itself to the new

position. She rested her clasped hands on the tabletop and looked up at the

younger woman.

Not much younger, really, Taraza thought.

Since school, though, Taraza had thought of Odrade as completely removed into a

younger age group, creating a gap no passage of years could close.

"Care at the beginning, Dar," Taraza said.

"This project is well past its beginning," Odrade said.

"But your part in it starts now. And we are launching ourselves into such a

beginning as has never before been attempted."

"Am I now to learn the entire design for this ghola?"

"No."

That was it. All the evidence of high-level dispute and the "need to know" cast

away with a single word. But Odrade understood. There was an organizational

rubric laid down by the original Bene Gesserit Chapter House, which had endured

with only minor changes for millennia. Bene Gesserit divisions were cut by hard

vertical and horizontal barriers, divided into isolated groups that converged to

a single command only here at the top. Duties (for which read "assigned roles")

were conducted within separated cells. Active participants within a cell did

not know their contemporaries within other parallel cells.

But I know that the Reverend Mother Lucilla is in a parallel cell, Odrade

thought. It's the logical answer.

She recognized the necessity. It was an ancient design copied from secret

revolutionary societies. The Bene Gesserit had always seen themselves as

permanent revolutionaries. It was a revolution that had been dampened only in

the time of the Tyrant, Leto II.

Dampened, but not diverted or stopped, Odrade reminded herself.

"In what you're about to do," Taraza said, "tell me if you sense any immediate

threat to the Sisterhood."

It was one of Taraza's peculiar demands, which Odrade had learned to answer out

of wordless instinct, which then could be formed into words. Quickly, she said:

"If we fail to act, that is worse."

"We reasoned that there would be danger," Taraza said. She spoke in a dry,

remote voice. Taraza did not like calling up this talent in Odrade. The

younger woman possessed a prescient instinct for detecting threats to the

Sisterhood. It came from the wild influence in her genetic line, of course --

the Atreides with their dangerous talents. There was a special mark on Odrade's

breeding file: "Careful examination of all offspring." Two of those offspring

had been quietly put to death.

I should not have awakened Odrade's talent now, not even for a moment, Taraza

thought. But sometimes temptation was very great.

Taraza sealed the projector into her tabletop and looked at the blank surface

while speaking. "Even if you find a perfect sire, you are not to breed without

our permission while you are away from us."

"The mistake of my natural mother," Odrade said.

"The mistake of your natural mother was to be recognized while she was

breeding!"

Odrade had heard this before. There was that thing about the Atreides line that

required the most careful monitoring by the breeding mistresses. The wild

talent, of course. She knew about the wild talent, that genetic force which had

produced the Kwisatz Haderach and the Tyrant. What did the breeding mistresses

seek now, though? Was their approach mostly negative? No more dangerous

births! She had never seen any of her babies after they were born, not

necessarily a curious thing for the Sisterhood. And she never saw any of the

records in her own genetic file. Here, too, the Sisterhood operated with

careful separation of powers.

And those earlier prohibitions on my Other Memories!

She had found the blank spaces in her memories and opened them. It was probable

that only Taraza and perhaps two other councillors (Bellonda, most likely, and

one other older Reverend Mother) shared the more sensitive access to such

breeding information.

Had Taraza and the other really sworn to die before revealing privileged

information to an outsider? There was, after all, a precise ritual of

succession should a key Reverend Mother die while away from her Sisters and with

no chance to pass along her encapsulated lives. The ritual had been called into

play many times during the reign of the Tyrant. A terrible period! Knowing

that the revolutionary cells of the Sisterhood were transparent to him!

Monster! She knew that her sisters had never deluded themselves that Leto II

refrained from destroying the Bene Gesserit out of some deep-seated loyalty to

his grandmother, the Lady Jessica.

Are you there, Jessica?

Odrade felt the stirring far within. The failure of one Reverend Mother: "She

allowed herself to fall in love!" Such a small thing but how great the

consequences. Thirty-five hundred years of tyranny!

The Golden Path. Infinite? What of the lost megatrillions gone into the

Scattering? What threat was posed by those Lost Ones returning now?

As though she read Odrade's mind, which sometimes she appeared to do, Taraza

said: "The Scattered ones are out there . . . just waiting to pounce."

Odrade had heard the arguments: Danger on the one hand and on the other,

something magnetically attractive. So many magnificent unknowns. The

Sisterhood with its talents honed by melange over the millennia -- what might

they not do with such untapped resources of humanity? Think of the uncounted

genes out there! Think of the potential talents floating free in universes

where they might be lost forever!

"It's the not knowing that conjures up the greatest terrors," Odrade said.

"And the greatest ambitions," Taraza said.

"Then do I go to Rakis?"

"In due course. I find you adequate to the task."

"Or you would not have assigned me."

It was an old exchange between them, going right back to their school days.

Taraza realized, though, that she had not entered it consciously. Too many

memories tangled the two of them: Dar and Tar. Have to watch that!

"Remember where your loyalties are," Taraza said.

The existence of no-ships raises the possibility of destroying entire planets

without retaliation. A large object, asteroid or equivalent, may be sent

against the planet. Or the people can be set against each other by sexual

subversion, and then can be armed to destroy themselves. These Honored Matres

appear to favor this latter technique.

-Bene Gesserit Analysis

From his position in the courtyard and even when not appearing to do so, Duncan

Idaho kept his attention on the observers above him. There was Patrin, of

course, but Patrin did not count. It was the Reverend Mothers across from

Patrin who bore watching. Seeing Lucilla, he thought: That's the new one.

This thought filled him with a surge of excitement, which he took out in renewed

exercise.

He completed the first three patterns of the training-play Miles Teg had

ordered, vaguely aware that Patrin would report on how well he did. Duncan

liked Teg and old Patrin and sensed that the feeling was reciprocated. This new

Reverend Mother, though -- her presence suggested interesting changes. For one

thing, she was younger than the others. Also, this new one did not try to hide

the eyes that were a first clue to her membership in the Bene Gesserit. His

first glimpse of Schwangyu had confronted him with eyes concealed behind contact

lenses that simulated non-addict pupils and slightly bloodshot whites. He had

heard one of the Keep's acolytes say Schwangyu's lenses also corrected for "an

astigmatic weakness that has been accepted in her genetic line as a reasonable

exchange for the other qualities she transmits to her offspring."

At the time, most of this remark was unintelligible to Duncan but he had looked

up the references in the Keep's library, references both scarce and severely

limited in content. Schwangyu herself parried all of his questions on the

subject, but the subsequent behavior of his teachers told him she had been

angry. Typically, she had taken out her anger on others.

What really upset her, he suspected, was his demand to know whether she was his

mother.

For a long time now Duncan had known he was something special. There were

places in the elaborate compound of this Bene Gesserit Keep where he was not

permitted. He had found private ways to evade such prohibitions and had stared

out often through thick plaz and open windows at guards and wide reaches of

cleared ground that could be enfiladed from strategically positioned pillboxes.

Miles Teg himself had taught the significance of enfilade positioning.

Gammu, the planet was called now. Once, it had been known as Giedi Prime but

someone named Gurney Halleck had changed that. It was all ancient history.

Dull stuff. There still remained a faint smell of bitter oil in the planet's

dirt from its pre-Danian days. Millennia of special plantations were changing

that, his teachers explained. He could see part of this from the Keep. Forests

of conifers and other trees surrounded them here.

Still covertly watching the two Reverend Mothers, Duncan did a series of

cartwheels. He flexed his striking muscles as he moved, just the way Teg had

taught him.

Teg also instructed in planetary defenses. Gammu was ringed by orbiting

monitors whose crews could not have their families aboard. The families

remained down here on Gammu, hostage to the vigilance of those guardian

orbiters. Somewhere among the ships in space, there were undetectable no-ships

whose crews were composed entirely of the Bashar's people and Bene Gesserit

Sisters.

"I would not have taken this assignment without full charge of all defensive

arrangements," Teg explained.

Duncan realized that he was "this assignment." The Keep was here to protect

him. Teg's orbiting monitors, including the no-ships, protected the Keep.

It was all part of a military education whose elements Duncan found somehow

familiar. Learning how to defend a seemingly vulnerable planet from attacks

originating in space, he knew when those defenses were correctly placed. It was

extremely complicated as a whole but the elements were identifiable and could be

understood. There was, for instance, the constant monitoring of atmosphere and

the blood serum of Gammu's inhabitants. Suk doctors in the pay of the Bene

Gesserit were everywhere.

"Diseases are weapons," Teg said. "Our defense against diseases must be finely

tuned."

Frequently, Teg railed against passive defenses. He called them "the product of

a siege mentality long known to create deadly weaknesses."

When it came to military instructions from Teg, Duncan listened carefully.

Patrin and the library records confirmed that the Mentat Bashar Miles Teg had

been a famous military leader for the Bene Gesserit. Patrin often referred to

their service together and always Teg was the hero.

"Mobility is the key to military success," Teg said. "If you're tied down in

forts, even whole-planet forts, you are ultimately vulnerable."

Teg did not much care for Gammu.

"I see that you already know this place was called Giedi Prime once. The

Harkonnens who ruled here taught us a few things. We have a better idea, thanks

to them, of how terrifyingly brutal humans can become."

As he recalled this, Duncan observed that the two Reverend Mothers watching from

the parapet obviously were discussing him.

Am I the new one's assignment?

Duncan did not like being watched and he hoped the new one would allow him some

time to himself. She did not look like a tough one. Not like Schwangyu.

As he continued his exercises, Duncan timed them to a private litany: Damn

Schwangyu! Damn Schwangyu!

He had hated Schwangyu from the age of nine -- four years now. She did not know

his hate, he thought. She had probably forgotten all about the incident where

his hate had been ignited.

Barely nine and he had managed to slip through the inner guards out into a

tunnel that led to one of the pillboxes. Smell of fungus in the tunnel. Dim

lights. Dampness. He peered out through the box's weapons slits before being

caught and hustled back into the core of the Keep.

This escapade occasioned a stern lecture from Schwangyu, a remote and

threatening figure whose orders must be obeyed. That was how he still thought

of her, although he had since learned about the Bene Gesserit Voice-of-Command,

that vocal subtlety which could bend the will of an untrained listener.

She must be obeyed.

"You have occasioned the disciplining of an entire guard unit," Schwangyu said.

"They will be severely punished."

That had been the most terrible part of her lecture. Duncan liked some of the

guards and occasionally lured some of them into real play with laughter and

tumbling. His prank, sneaking out to the pillbox, had hurt his friends.

Duncan knew what it was to be punished.

Damn Schwangyu! Damn Schwangyu! . . .

After Schwangyu's lecture, Duncan ran to his chief instructor of the moment,

Reverend Mother Tamalane, another of the wizened old ones with a cool and aloof

manner, snowy hair above a narrow face and a leather skin. He demanded of

Tamalane to know about the punishment of his guards. Tamalane fell into a

surprising pensive mood, her voice like sand rasping against wood.

"Punishments? Well, well."

They were in the small teaching room off the larger practice floor where

Tamalane went each evening to prepare the next day's lessons. It was a place of

bubble and spool readers and other sophisticated means for information storage

and retrieval. Duncan far preferred it to the library but he was not allowed in

the teaching room unattended. It was a bright room lighted by many suspensorbuoyed

glowglobes. At his intrusion, Tamalane turned away from where she laid

out his lessons.

"There's always something of a sacrificial banquet about our major punishments,"

she said. "The guards will, of course, receive major punishment."

"Banquet?" Duncan was puzzled.

Tamalane swung completely around in her swivel seat and looked directly into his

eyes. Her steely teeth glittered in the bright lights. "History has seldom

been good to those who must be punished," she said.

Duncan flinched at the word "history." It was one of Tamalane's signals. She

was going to teach a lesson, another boring lesson.

"Bene Gesserit punishments cannot be forgotten."

Duncan focused on Tamalane's old mouth, sensing abruptly that she spoke out of

painful personal experience. He was going to learn something interesting!

"Our punishments carry an inescapable lesson," Tamalane said. "It is much more

than the pain."

Duncan sat on the floor at her feet. From this angle, Tamalane was a blackshrouded

and ominous figure.

"We do not punish with the ultimate agony," she said. "That is reserved for a

Reverend Mother's passage through the spice."

Duncan nodded. Library records referred to "spice agony," a mysterious trial

that created a Reverend Mother.

"Major punishments are painful, nonetheless," she said. "They are also

emotionally painful. Emotion evoked by punishment is always that emotion we

judge to be the penitent's greatest weakness and thus we strengthen the

punished."

Her words filled Duncan with unfocused dread. What were they doing to his

guards? He could not speak but there was no need. Tamalane was not finished.

"The punishment always ends with a dessert," she said and she clapped her hands

against her knees.

Duncan frowned. Dessert? That was part of a banquet. How could a banquet be

punishment?

"It is not really a banquet but the idea of a banquet," Tamalane said. One

clawlike hand described a circle in the air. "The dessert comes something

totally unexpected. The penitent thinks: Ahhh, I have been forgiven at last!

You understand?"

Duncan shook his head from side to side. No, he did not understand.

"It is the sweetness of the moment," she said. "You have been through every

course of a painful banquet and come out at the end to something you can savor.

But! As you savor it, then comes the most painful moment of all, the

recognition, the understanding that this is not pleasure-at-the-end. No,

indeed. This is the ultimate pain of the major punishment. It locks in the

Bene Gesserit lesson."

"But what will she do to those guards?" The words were wrenched from Duncan.

"I cannot say what the specific elements of the individual punishments will be.

I have no need to know. I can only tell you it will be different for each of

them."

Tamalane would say no more. She returned to laying out the next day's lessons.

"We will continue tomorrow," she said, "teaching you to identify the sources of

the various accents of spoken Galach."

No one else, not even Teg or Patrin, would answer his questions about the

punishments. Even the guards, when he saw them afterward, refused to speak of

their ordeals. Some reacted curtly to his overtures and none would play with

him anymore. There was no forgiveness among the punished. That much was clear.

Damn Schwangyu! Damn Schwangyu! . . .

That was where his deep hatred of her began. All of the old witches shared in

his hatred. Would the new young one be the same as the old ones?

Damn Schwangyu!

When he demanded of Schwangyu: "Why did you have to punish them?" Schwangyu

took some time before answering, then: "It is dangerous for you here on Gammu.

There are people who wish you harm."

Duncan did not ask why. This was another area where his questions were never

answered. Not even Teg would answer, although Teg's very presence emphasized

the fact of that danger.

And Miles Teg was a Mentat who must know many answers. Duncan often saw the old

man's eyes glisten while his thoughts went far away. But there was no Mentat

response to such questions as:

"Why are we here on Gammu?"

"Who do you guard against? Who wants to harm me?"

"Who are my parents?"

Silence greeted such questions or sometimes Teg would growl: "I cannot answer

you."

The library was useless. He had discovered this when he was only eight and his

chief instructor was a failed Reverend Mother named Luran Geasa -- not quite as

ancient as Schwangyu but well along in years, more than a hundred, anyway.

At his demand, the library produced information about Gammu/Giedi Prime, about

the Harkonnens and their fall, about various conflicts where Teg had commanded.

None of those battles came through as very bloody; several commentators referred

to Teg's "superb diplomacy." But, one datum leading to another, Duncan learned

about the time of the God Emperor and the taming of his people. This period

commanded Duncan's attention for weeks. He found an old map in the records and

projected it on the focus wall. The commentator's superimpositions told him

that this very Keep had been a Fish Speaker Command Center abandoned during the

Scattering.

Fish Speakers!

Duncan wished then that he had lived during their time, serving as one of the

rare male advisors in the female army that had worshiped the great God Emperor.

Oh, to have lived on Rakis in those days!

Teg was surprisingly forthcoming about the God Emperor, calling him always "the

Tyrant." A library lock was opened and information about Rakis came pouring out

for Duncan.

"Will I ever see Rakis?" he asked Geasa.

"You are being prepared to live there."

The answer astonished him. Everything they taught him about that faraway planet

came into new focus.

"Why will I live there?"

"I cannot answer that."

With renewed interest, he returned to his studies of that mysterious planet and

its miserable Church of Shai-hulud, the Divided God. Worms. The God Emperor

had become those worms! The idea filled Duncan with awe. Perhaps here was

something worthy of worship. The thought touched a chord in him. What had

driven a man to accept that terrible metamorphosis?

Duncan knew what his guards and the others in the Keep thought about Rakis and

the core of priesthood there. Sneering remarks and laughter told it all. Teg

said: "We'll probably never know the whole truth of it, but I tell you, lad,

that's no religion for a soldier."

Schwangyu capped it: "You are to learn about the Tyrant but you are not to

believe in his religion. That is beneath you, contemptible."

In every spare study moment Duncan pored over whatever the library produced for

him: the Holy Book of the Divided God, the Guard Bible, the Orange Catholic

Bible and even the Apocrypha. He learned about the long defunct Bureau of the

Faith and "The Pearl that IS the Sun of Understanding."

The very idea of the worms fascinated him. Their size! A big one would stretch

from one end of the Keep to the other. Men had ridden the pre-Tyrant worms but

the Rakian priesthood forbade this now.

He found himself gripped by accounts from the archeological team that had found

the Tyrant's primitive no-chamber on Rakis. Dar-es-Balat, the place was called.

The reports by Archeologist Hadi Benotto were marked "Suppressed by orders of

the Rakian Priesthood." The file number on the accounts from Bene Gesserit

Archives was a long one and what Benotto revealed was fascinating.

"A kernel of the God Emperor's awareness in each worm?" he asked Geasa.

"So it's said. And even if true, they are not conscious, not aware. The Tyrant

himself said he would enter an endless dream."

Each study session occasioned a special lecture and Bene Gesserit explanations

of religion until finally he encountered those accounts called "The Nine

Daughters of Siona" and "The Thousand Sons of Idaho."

Confronting Geasa, he demanded: "My name is Duncan Idaho, too. What does that

mean?"

Geasa always moved as though standing in the shadow of her failure, her long

head bent forward and her watery eyes aimed at the ground. The confrontation

occurred near evening in the long hall outside the practice floor. She paled at

his question.

When she did not answer, he demanded: "Am I descended from Duncan Idaho?"

"You must ask Schwangyu." Geasa sounded as though the words pained her.

It was a familiar response and it angered him. She meant he would be told

something to shut him up, little information in the telling. Schwangyu,

however, was more open than expected.

"You carry the authentic blood of Duncan Idaho."

"Who are my parents?"

"They are long dead."

"How did they die?"

"I do not know. We received you as an orphan."

"Then why do people want to harm me?"

"They fear what you may do."

"What is it I may do?"

"Study your lessons. All will be made clear to you in time."

Shut up and study! Another familiar answer.

He obeyed because he had learned to recognize when the doors were closed on him.

But now his questing intelligence met other accounts of the Famine Times and the

Scattering, the no-chambers and no-ships that could not be traced, not even by

the most powerful prescient minds in their universe. Here, he encountered the

fact that descendants of Duncan Idaho and Siona, those ancients who had served

the Tyrant God Emperor, also were invisible to prophets and prescients. Not

even a Guild Steersman deep in melange trance could detect such people. Siona,

the accounts told him, was a true-bred Atreides and Duncan Idaho was a ghola.

Ghola?

He probed the library for elaborations on this peculiar word.

Ghola. The library produced for him no more than bare-boned accounts: "Gholas:

humans grown from a cadaver's cells in Tleilaxu axlotl tanks."

Axlotl tanks?

"A Tleilaxu device for reproducing a living human being from the cells of a

cadaver."

"Describe a ghola," he demanded.

"Innocent flesh devoid of its original memories. See Axlotl Tanks."

Duncan had learned to read the silences, the blank places in what the people of

the Keep revealed to him. Revelation swept over him. He knew! Only ten and he

knew!

I am a ghola.

Late afternoon in the library, all of the esoteric machinery around him faded

into a sensory background, and a ten-year-old sat silently before a scanner

hugging the knowledge to himself.

I am a ghola!

He could not remember the axlotl tanks where his cells had grown into an infant.

His first memories were of Geasa picking him up from his cradle, the alert

interest in those adult eyes that had so soon faded into wary lidding.

It was as though the information so grudgingly supplied him by the Keep's people

and records had at last defined a central shape: himself.

"Tell me about the Bene Tleilax," he demanded of the library.

"They are a people self-divided into Face Dancers and Masters. Face Dancers are

mules, sterile and submissive to the Masters."

Why did they do this to me?

The information machines of the library were suddenly alien and dangerous. He

was afraid, not that his questions might meet more blank walls, but that he

would receive answers.

Why am I so important to Schwangyu and the others?

He felt that they had wronged him, even Miles Teg and Patrin. Why was it right

to take the cells of a human and produce a ghola?

He asked the next question with great hesitation. "Can a ghola ever remember

who he was?"

"It can be done."

"How?"

"The psychological identity of ghola to original pre-sets certain responses,

which can be ignited by trauma."

No answer at all!

"But how?"

Schwangyu intruded at this point, arriving at the library unannounced. So

something about his questions had been set to alert her!

"All will be made clear to you in time," she said.

She talked down to him! He sensed the injustice in it, the lack of

truthfulness. Something within him said he carried more human wisdom in his

unawakened self than the ones who presumed themselves so superior. His hatred

of Schwangyu reached a new intensity. She was the personification of all who

tantalized him and frustrated his questions.

Now, though, his imagination was on fire. He would recapture his original

memories! He felt the truth of this. He would remember his parents, his

family, his friends . . . his enemies.

He demanded it of Schwangyu: "Did you produce me because of my enemies?"

"You have already learned silence, child," she said. "Rely on that knowledge."

Very well. That's how I will fight you, damned Schwangyu. I will be silent and

I will learn. I won't show you how I really feel.

"You know," she said, "I think we're raising a stoic."

She patronized him! He would not be patronized. He would fight them all with

silence and watchfulness. Duncan ran from the library and huddled in his room.

In the following months, many things confirmed that he was a ghola. Even a

child knew when things around him were extraordinary. He saw other children

occasionally beyond the walls, walking along the perimeter road, laughing and

calling. He found accounts of children in the library. Adults did not come to

those children and engage them in rigorous training of the sort imposed on him.

Other children did not have a Reverend Mother Schwangyu to order every smallest

aspect of their lives.

His discovery precipitated another change in Duncan's life. Luran Geasa was

called away from him and did not return.

She was not supposed to let me know about gholas.

The truth was somewhat more complex, as Schwangyu explained to Lucilla on the

observation parapet the day of Lucilla's arrival.

"We knew the inevitable moment would come. He would learn about gholas and ask

the pointed questions."

"It was high time a Reverend Mother took over his everyday education. Geasa may

have been a mistake."

"Are you questioning my judgment?" Schwangyu snapped.

"Is your judgment so perfect that it may never be questioned?" In Lucilla's

soft contralto, the question had the impact of a slap.

Schwangyu remained silent for almost a minute. Presently, she said: "Geasa

thought the ghola was an endearing child. She cried and said she would miss

him."

"Wasn't she warned about that?"

"Geasa did not have our training."

"So you replaced her with Tamalane at that time. I do not know Tamalane but I

presume she is quite old."

"Quite."

"What was his reaction to the removal of Geasa?"

"He asked where she had gone. We did not answer."

"How did Tamalane fare?"

"On his third day with her, he told her very calmly: I hate you. Is that what

I'm supposed to do?"'

"So quickly!"

"Right now, he's watching you and thinking: I hate Schwangyu. Will I have to

hate this new one? But he is also thinking that you are not like the other old

witches. You're young. He will know that this must be important."

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he

belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and

you destroy the person.

-Bene Gesserit Teaching

Miles Teg had not wanted the Gammu assignment. Weapons master to a ghola-child?

Even such a ghola-child as this one, with all of the history woven around him.

It was an unwanted intrusion into Teg's well-ordered retirement.

But he had lived all of that life as a Military Mentat under the will of the

Bene Gesserit and could not compute an act of disobedience.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodiet?

Who shall guard the guardians? Who shall see that the guardians commit no

offenses?

This was a question that Teg had considered carefully on many occasions. It

formed one of the basic tenets of his loyalty to the Bene Gesserit. Whatever

else you might say about the Sisterhood, they displayed an admirable constancy

of purpose.

Moral purpose, Teg labeled it.

The Bene Gesserit moral purpose agreed completely with Teg's principles. That

those principles were Bene Gesserit-conditioned in him did not enter into the

question. Rational thought, especially Mentat rationality, could make no other

judgment.

Teg boiled it down to an essence: If only one person followed such guiding

principles, this was a better universe. It was never a question of justice.

Justice required one to resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress,

subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws.

No, it was a question of fairness, a concept that went much deeper. The people

upon whom judgment was passed must feel the fairness of it.

To Teg, statements such as "the letter of the law must be observed" were

dangerous to his guiding principles. Being fair required agreement, predictable

constancy and, above all else, loyalty upward and downward in the hierarchy.

Leadership guided by such principles required no outside controls. You did your

duty because it was right. And you did not obey because that was predictably

correct. You did it because the rightness was a thing of this moment.

Prediction and prescience had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Teg knew the Atreides reputation for reliable prescience, but gnomic utterances

had no place in his universe. You took the universe as you found it and applied

your principles where you could. Absolute commands in the hierarchy were always

obeyed. Not that Taraza had made it a question of absolute command, but the

implications were there.

"You are the perfect person for this task."

He had lived a long life with many high points and he was retired with honor.

Teg knew he was old, slow and with all the defects of age waiting just at the

edges of his awareness, but the call to duty quickened him even while he was

forced to put down the wish to say "No."

The assignment had come from Taraza personally. The powerful senior of all

(including the Missionaria Protectiva) singled him out. Not just a Reverend

Mother but the Reverend Mother Superior.

Taraza came to his retirement sanctuary on Lernaeus. It honored him for her to

do this and he knew it. She appeared at his gate unannounced accompanied only

by two acolyte servers and a small guard force, some of whose faces he

recognized. Teg had trained them himself. The time of her arrival was

interesting. Morning, shortly after his breakfast. She knew the patterns of

his life and certainly knew that he was most alert at this hour. So she wanted

him awake and at his fullest capabilities.

Patrin, Teg's old batman brought Taraza into the east wing sitting room, a small

and elegant setting with only solid furniture in it. Teg's dislike of chairdogs

and other living furniture was well known. Patrin had a sour look on his face

as he ushered the black-robed Mother Superior into the room. Teg recognized the

look immediately. Patrin's long, pale face with its many age wrinkles might

appear an unmoved mask to others, but Teg was alert to the deepened wrinkles

beside the man's mouth, the set stare in the old eyes. So Taraza had said

something on the way in here that had disturbed Patrin.

Tall sliding doors of heavy plaz framed the room's eastward view down a long

sloping lawn to trees beside the river. Taraza paused just inside the room to

admire the view.

Without being told, Teg touched a button. Curtains slid across the view and

glowglobes came alight. Teg's action told Taraza he had computed a need for

privacy. He emphasized this by ordering Patrin: "Please see that we are not

disturbed."

"The orders for the South Farm, sir," Patrin ventured.

"Please see to that yourself. You and Firus know what I want."

Patrin closed the door a little too sharply as he left, a tiny signal but it

spoke much to Teg.

Taraza moved a pace into the room and examined it. "Lime green," she said.

"One of my favorite colors. Your mother had a fine eye."

Teg warmed to the remark. He had a deep affection for this building and this

land. His family had been here only three generations but their mark was on the

place. His mother's touches had not really been changed in many rooms.

"It's safe to love land and places," Teg said.

"I particularly liked the burnt orange carpets in the hall and the stained glass

fanlight over the entry door," Taraza said. "That fanlight is a real antique, I

am sure."

"You did not come here to talk about interior decoration," Teg said.

Taraza chuckled.

She had a high-pitched voice, which the Sisterhood's training had taught her to

use with devastating effectiveness. It was not a voice easy to ignore, even

when she appeared most carefully casual as she did now. Teg had seen her in

Bene Gesserit Council. Her manner there was powerful and persuasive, every word

an indicator of the incisive mind that guided her decisions. He could sense an

important decision beneath her demeanor now.

Teg indicated a green upholstered chair at his left. She glanced at it, swept

her gaze once more around the room and suppressed a smile.

Not a chairdog in the house, she would wager. Teg was an antique surrounding

himself with antiques. She seated herself and smoothed her robe while waiting

for Teg to take a matching chair facing her.

"I regret the need to ask that you come out of retirement, Bashar, she said.

"Unfortunately, circumstances give me little choice."

Teg rested his long arms casually on his chair's arms, a Mentat in repose,

waiting. His attitude said: "Fill my mind with data."

Taraza was momentarily abashed. This was an imposition. Teg was still a regal

figure tall and with that large head topped by gray hair. He was, she knew,

four SY short of three hundred. Granting that the Standard Year was some twenty

hours less than the so-called primitive year, it was still an impressive age

with experiences in Bene Gesserit service that demanded that she respect him.

Teg wore, she noted, a light gray uniform with no insignia: carefully tailored

trousers and jacket, white shirt open at the throat to reveal a deeply wrinkled

neck. There was a glint of gold at his waist and she recognized the Bashar's

sunburst he had received at retirement. How like the utilitarian Teg! He had

made the golden bauble into a belt buckle. This reassured her. Teg would

understand her problem.

"Could I have a drink of water?" Taraza asked. "It has been a long and

tiresome journey. We came the last stage by one of our transports, which we

should have replaced five hundred years ago."

Teg lifted himself from the chair, went to a wall panel and removed a chilled

water bottle and glass from a cabinet behind the panel. He put these on a low

table at Taraza's right hand. "I have melange," he said.

"No, thank you, Miles. I've my own supply."

Teg resumed his seat and she noted the signs of stiffness. He was still

remarkably supple, however, considering his years.

Taraza poured herself a half glass of water and drank it in one swallow. She

replaced the glass on the side table with elaborate care. How to approach this?

Teg's manner did not fool her. He did not want to leave retirement. Her

analysts had warned her about that. Since retirement, he had taken more than a

casual interest in farming. His extensive acreage here on Lernaeus was

essentially a research garden.

She lifted her gaze and studied him openly. Square shoulders accentuated Teg's

narrow waist. He still kept himself active then. That long face with its sharp

lines from the strong bones: typically Atreides. Teg returned her gaze as he

always did, demanding attention but open to whatever the Mother Superior might

say. His thin mouth was cocked into a slight smile, exposing bright and even

teeth.

He knows I'm uncomfortable, she thought. Damn it! He's just as much a servant

of the Sisterhood as I am!

Teg did not prompt her with questions. His manner remained impeccable,

curiously withdrawn. She reminded herself that this was a common trait of

Mentats and nothing else should be read into it.

Abruptly, Teg stood and strode to a sideboard at Taraza's left. He turned,

folded his arms across his breast and leaned there looking down at her.

Taraza was forced to swivel her chair to face him. Damn him! Teg was not going

to make this any easier for her. All of the Reverend Mother Examiners had

remarked a difficulty in getting Teg to sit for conversation. He preferred to

stand, his shoulders held with military stiffness, his gaze aimed downward. Few

Reverend Mothers matched his height -- more than two meters. This trait, the

analysts agreed, was Teg's way (probably unconscious) of protesting the

Sisterhood's authority over him. None of this, however, showed itself in his

other behavior. Teg had always been the most reliable military commander the

Sisterhood had ever employed.

In a multisociety universe whose major binding forces interacted with complexity

despite the simplicity of labels, reliable military commanders were worth their

weight in melange many times over. Religions and the common memory of imperial

tyrannies always figured in the negotiations but it was economic forces that

eventually carried the day and the military coin could be entered on anybody's

adding machine. It was there in every negotiation and would be for as long as

necessity drove the trading system -- the need for particular things (such as

spice or the technoproducts of Ix), the need for specialists (such as Mentats or

Suk doctors), and all of the other mundane needs for which there were markets:

for labor forces, for builders, for designers, for planiformed life, for

artists, for exotic pleasures . . .

No legal system could bind such complexity into a whole and this fact quite

obviously brought up another necessity -- the constant need for arbiters with

clout. Reverend Mothers had naturally fallen into this role within the economic

web and Miles Teg knew this. He also knew that he was once more being brought

out as a bargaining chip. Whether he enjoyed that role did not figure in the

negotiations.

"It's not as though you had any family to hold you here," Taraza said.

Teg accepted this silently. Yes, his wife had been dead thirty-eight years now.

His children were all grown and, with the exception of one daughter, gone from

the nest. He had his many personal interests but no family obligations. True.

Taraza reminded him then of his long and faithful service to the Sisterhood,

citing several memorable achievements. She knew the praise would have little

effect on him but it provided her with a needed opening for what must follow.

"You have been apprised of your familial resemblance," she said.

Teg inclined his head no more than a millimeter.

"Your resemblance to the first Leto Atreides, grandfather of the Tyrant, is

truly remarkable," she said.

Teg gave no sign that he heard or agreed. This was merely a datum, something

already stored in his copious memory. He knew he bore Atreides genes. He had

seen the likeness of Leto I at Chapter House. It had been oddly like looking

into a mirror.

"You're a bit taller," Taraza said.

Teg continued to stare down at her.

"Damn it all, Bashar," Taraza said, "will you at least try to help me?"

"Is that an order, Mother Superior?"

"No, it's not an order!"

Teg smiled slowly. The fact that Taraza allowed herself such an explosion in

front of him said many things. She would not do that with people she felt were

untrustworthy. And she certainly would not permit herself such an emotional

display with a person she considered merely an underling.

Taraza sat back in her chair and grinned up at him. "All right," she said.

"You've had your fun. Patrin said you would be most upset with me if I called

you back to duty. I assure you that you are crucial to our plans."

"What plans, Mother Superior?"

"We are raising a Duncan Idaho ghola on Gammu. He is almost six years old and

ready for military education."

Teg allowed his eyes to widen slightly.

"It will be a taxing duty for you," Taraza said, "but I want you to take over

his training and protection as soon as possible."

"My likeness to the Atreides Duke," Teg said. "You will use me to restore his

original memories."

"In eight or ten years, yes."

"That long!" Teg shook his head. "Why Gammu?"

"His prana-bindu inheritance has been altered by the Bene Tleilax, at our

orders. His reflexes will match in speed those of anyone born in our times.

Gammu . . . the original Duncan Idaho was born and raised there. Because of the

changes in his cellular inheritance we must keep all else as close to the

original conditions as possible."

"Why are you doing this?" It was a Mentat's data-conscious tone.

"A female child with the ability to control the worms had been discovered on

Rakis. We will have use for our ghola there."

"You will breed them?"

"I am not engaging you as a Mentat. It is your military abilities and your

likeness to the original Leto that we need. You know how to restore his

original memories when the time comes."

"So you're really bringing me back as a Weapons Master."

"You think that's a comedown for the man who was Supreme Bashar of all our

forces?"

"Mother Superior, you command and I obey. But I will not accept this post

without full command of all of Gammu's defenses."

"That already has been arranged, Miles."

"You always did know how my mind works."

"And I've always been confident of your loyalty."

Teg pushed himself away from the sideboard and stood a moment in thought, then:

"Who will brief me?"

"Bellonda from Records, the same as before. She will provide you with a cipher

to secure the exchange of messages between us."

"I will give you a list of people," Teg said. "Old comrades and the children of

some of them. I will want all of them waiting on Gammu when I arrive."

"You don't think any of them will refuse?"

His look said: "Don't be silly!"

Taraza chuckled and she thought: There's a thing we learned well from the

original Atreides -- how to produce people who command the utmost devotion and

loyalty.

"Patrin will handle the recruiting," Teg said. "He won't accept rank I know,

but he's to get the full pay and courtesies of a colonel-aide."

"You will, of course, be restored to the rank of Supreme Bashar," she said. "We

will . . ."

"No. You have Burzmali. We will not weaken him by bringing back his old

Commander over him."

She studied him a moment, then: "We have not yet commissioned Burzmali as . .

."

"I am well aware of that. My old comrades keep me fully informed of Sisterhood

politics. But you and I, Mother Superior, know it's only a matter of time.

Burzmali is the best."

She could only accept this. It was more than a military Mentat's assessment.

It was Teg's assessment. Another thought struck her.

"Then you already knew about our dispute in Council!" she accused. "And you let

me . . ."

"Mother Superior, if I thought you would produce another monster on Rakis, I

would have said so. You trust my decisions; I trust yours."

"Damn you, Miles, we've been apart too long." Taraza stood. "I feel calmer

just knowing you'll be back in harness."

"Harness," he said. "Yes. Reinstate me as a Bashar on special assignment.

That way, when word gets back to Burzmali, there'll be no silly questions."

Taraza produced a sheaf of ridulian papers from beneath her robe and passed them

to Teg. "I've already signed these. Fill in your own reinstatement. The other

authorizations are all there, transport vouchers and so on. I give you these

orders personally. You are to obey me. You are my Bashar, do you understand?"

"Wasn't I always?" he asked.

"It's more important than ever now. Keep that ghola safe and train him well.

He's your responsibility. And I will back you in that against anyone."

"I hear Schwangyu commands on Gammu."

"Against anyone Miles. Don't trust Schwangyu."

"I see. Will you lunch with us? My daughter has . . ."

"Forgive me, Miles, but I must get back soonest. I will send Bellonda at once."

Teg saw her to the door, exchanged a few pleasantries with his old students in

her party and watched as they left. They had an armored groundcar waiting in

the drive, one of the new models that they obviously had brought with them.

Sight of it gave Teg an uneasy feeling.

Urgency!

Taraza had come in person, the Mother Superior herself on a messenger's errand,

knowing what that would reveal to him. Knowing so intimately how the Sisterhood

performed, he saw the revelation in what had just happened. The dispute in the

Bene Gesserit Council went far deeper than his informants had suggested.

"You are my Bashar."

Teg glanced through the sheaf of authorizations and vouchers Taraza had left

with him. Already carrying her seal and signature. The trust this implied

added to the other things he sensed and increased his disquiet.

"Don't trust Schwangyu."

He slipped the papers into his pocket and went in search of Patrin. Patrin

would have to be briefed, and mollified. They would have to discuss whom to

call in for this assignment. He began to list some of the names in his mind.

Dangerous duty ahead. It called for only the best people. Damn! Everything on

the estate here would have to be passed over to Firus and Dimela. So many

details! He felt his pulse quicken as he strode through the house.

Passing a house guard, one of his old soldiers, Teg paused: "Martin, cancel all

of my appointments for today. Find my daughter and tell her to meet me in my

study."

Word spread through the house and, from there, across the estate. Servants and

family, knowing that The Reverend Mother Superior had just conversed privately

with him, automatically set up a protective screen to keep idle distractions

away from Teg. His eldest daughter, Dimela, cut him short when he tried to list

details necessary to carry on his experimental farm projects.

"Father, I am not an infant!"

They were in the small greenhouse attached to his study. Remains of Teg's lunch

sat on the corner of a potting bench. Patrin's notebook was propped against the

wall behind, the luncheon tray.

Teg looked sharply at his daughter. Dimela favored him in appearance but not in

height. Too angular to be a beauty but she had made a good marriage. They had

three fine children, Dimela and Firus.

"Where is Firus?" Teg asked.

"He's out seeing to the replanting of the South Farm."

"Oh, yes. Patrin mentioned that."

Teg smiled. It had always pleased him that Dimela had refused the Sisterhood's

bid, preferring to marry Firus, a native of Lernaeus, and remain in her father's

entourage.

"All I know is that they're calling you back to duty," Dimela said. "Is it a

dangerous assignment?"

"You know, you sound exactly like your mother," Teg said.

"So it is dangerous! Damn them, haven't you done enough for them?"

"Apparently not."

She turned away from him as Patrin entered the far end of the greenhouse. He

heard her speak to Patrin as they passed.

"The older he gets the more he gets like a Reverend Mother himself!"

What else could she expect? Teg wondered. The son of a Reverend Mother,

fathered by a minor functionary of the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer

Mercantiles, he had matured in a household that moved to the Sisterhood's beat.

It had been apparent to him at an early age that his father's allegiance to

CHOAM's interplanetary trading network vanished when his mother objected.

This house had been his mother's house until her death less than a year after

his father died. The imprint of her choices lay all around him.

Patrin stopped in front of him. "I came back for my notebook. Have you added

any names?"

"A few. You'd better get right on it."

"Yes, sir!" Patrin did a smart about-face and strode back the way he had come,

slapping the notebook against his leg.

He feels it, too, Teg thought.

Once more, Teg glanced around him. This house was still his mother's place.

After all the years he had lived here, raised a family here! Still her place.

Oh, he had built this greenhouse, but the study there had been her private room.

Janet Roxbrough of the Lernaeus Roxbroughs. The furnishings, the decor, still

her place. Taraza had seen that. He and his wife had changed some of the

surface objects, but the core remained Janet Roxbrough's. No question about the

Fish Speaker blood in that lineage. What a prize she had been for the

Sisterhood! That she had wed Loschy Teg and lived out her life here, that was

the oddity. An undigestible fact until you knew how the Sisterhood's breeding

designs worked over the generations.

They've done it again, Teg thought. They've had me waiting in the wings all

these years just for this moment.

Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia?

-The Tleilaxu Question, from Muad'dib Speaks

The air of Tleilax was crystalline, gripped by a stillness that was part the

morning chill and part a sense of fearful crouching, as though life waited out

there in the city of Bandalong, life anticipating and ravenous, which would not

stir until it received his personal signal. The Mahai, Tylwyth Waff, Master of

the Masters, enjoyed this hour more than any other of the day. The city was his

now as he looked out through his open window. Bandalong would come alive only

at his command. This was what he told himself. The fear that he could sense

out there was his hold on any reality that might arise from that incubating

reservoir of life: the Tleilaxu civilization that had originated here and then

spread its powers afar.

They had waited millennia for this time, his people. Waff savored the moment

now. All through the bad times of the Prophet Leto II (not God Emperor but

God's Messenger), all through the Famines and the Scattering, through every

painful defeat at the hands of lesser creatures, through all of those agonies

the Tleilaxu had built their patient forces for this moment.

We have come to our moment, O Prophet!

The city that lay beneath his high window he saw as a symbol, one strong mark on

the page of Tleilaxu design. Other Tleilaxu planets, other great cities,

interlinked, interdependent, and with central allegiance to his God and his

city, awaited the signal that all of them knew must come soon. The twinned

forces of Face Dancers and Masheikh had compressed their powers in preparation

for the cosmic leap. The millennia of waiting were about to end.

Waff thought of it as "the long beginning."

Yes. He nodded to himself as he looked at the crouching city. From its

inception, from that infinitesimal kernel of an idea, Bene Tleilax leaders had

understood the perils of a plan so extended, so protracted, so convoluted and

subtle. They had known they must surmount near disaster time and again, accept

galling losses, submissions and humiliations. All of this and much more had

gone into the construction of a particular Bene Tleilax image. By those

millennia of pretense they had created a myth.

"The vile, detestable, dirty Tleilaxu! The stupid Tleilaxu! The predictable

Tleilaxu! The impetuous Tleilaxu!"

Even the Prophet's minions had fallen prey to this myth. A captive Fish Speaker

had stood in this very room and shouted at a Tleilaxu Master: "Long pretense

creates a reality! You are truly vile!" So they had killed her and the Prophet

did nothing.

How little all of those alien worlds and peoples understood Tleilaxu restraint.

Impetuosity? Let them reconsider after the Bene Tleilax demonstrated how many

millennia they were capable of waiting for their ascendancy.

"Spannungsbogen!"

Waff rolled the ancient word on his tongue: The span of the bow! How far back

you draw the bow before releasing your arrow. This arrow would strike deep!

"The Masheikh have waited longer than any other," Waff whispered. He dared to

utter the word to himself here in his tower fastness: "Masheikh."

The rooftops below him glittered as the sun lifted. He could hear the stirrings

of the city's life. The sweet bitterness of Tleilaxu smells drifted on the air

coming in his window. Waff inhaled deeply and closed his window.

He felt renewed by his moment of solitary observation. Turning away from the

window, he donned the white khilat robe of honor to which all Domel were

conditioned to bow. The robe completely covered his short body, giving him the

distinct feeling that it actually was armor.

The armor of God!

"We are the people of the Yaghist," he had reminded his councillors only last

night. "All else is frontier. We have fostered the myth of our weakness and

evil practices for these millennia with only one purpose. Even the Bene

Gesserit believe!"

Seated in the deep, windowless sagra with its no-chamber shield, his nine

councillors had smiled in silent appreciation of his words. In the judgment of

the ghufran, they knew. The stage upon which the Tleilaxu determined their own

destiny had always been the kehl with its right of ghufran.

It was proper that even Waff, the most powerful of all Tleilaxu, could not leave

his world and be readmitted without abasing himself in the ghufran, begging

pardon for contact with the unimaginable sins of aliens. To go out among the

powindah could soil even the mightiest. The khasadars who policed all Tleilaxu

frontiers and guarded the selamliks of the women were right to suspect even

Waff. He was of the people and the kehl, yes, but he must prove it each time he

left the heartland and returned, and certainly every time he entered the

selamlik for the distribution of his sperm.

Waff crossed to his long mirror and inspected himself and his robe. To the

powindahs, he knew, he appeared an elfin figure barely a meter and a half tall.

Eyes, hair, and skin were shades of gray, all a stage for the oval face with its

tiny mouth and line of sharp teeth. A Face Dancer might mimic his features and

pose, might dissemble at a Masheikh's command, but no Masheikh or khasadar would

be fooled. Only the powindahs would be gulled.

Except for the Bene Gesserit!

This thought brought a scowl to his face. Well, the witches had yet to

encounter one of the new Face Dancers.

No other people have mastered the genetic language as well as have the Bene

Tleilax, he reassured himself. We are right to call it "the language of God,"

for God Himself has given us this great power.

Waff strode to his door and waited for the morning bell. There was no way, he

thought, to describe the richness of emotion he felt now. Time unfolded for

him. He did not ask why the Prophet's true message had been heard only by the

Bene Tleilax. It had been God's doing and, in that, the Prophet had been the

Arm of God, worthy of respect as God's Messenger.

You prepared them for us, O Prophet.

And the ghola on Gammu, this ghola at this time, was worth all of the waiting.

The morning bell sounded and Waff strode out into the hall, turned with other

emerging white-robed figures and went onto the eastern balcony to greet the sun.

As the Mahai and Abdl of his people, he now could identify himself with all

Tleilaxu.

We are the legalists of the Shariat, the last of our kind in the universe.

Nowhere outside the sealed chambers of his malik-brothers could he reveal such a

secret thought but he knew it was a thought shared in every mind around him now,

and the workings of that thought were visible in Masheikh, Domel and Face Dancer

alike. The paradox of kinship ties and a sense of social identity that

permeated the khel from Masheikh down to the lowliest Domel was not a paradox to

Waff.

We work for the same God.

A Face Dancer in the guise of Domel had bowed and opened the balcony doors.

Waff, emerging into sunlight with his many companions close around, smiled at

recognition of the Face Dancer. A Domel yet! It was a kin joke but Face

Dancers were not kin. They were constructs, tools, just as the ghola on Gammu

was a tool, all designed with the language of God spoken only by Masheikhs.

With the others who pressed close around him Waff made obeisance to the sun. He

uttered the cry of the Abdl and heard it echoed by countless voices from the

farthest reaches of the city.

"The sun is not God!" he shouted.

No, the sun was only a symbol of God's infinite powers and mercy -- another

construct, another tool. Feeling cleansed by his passage through the ghufran

the previous night, renewed by the morning ritual, Waff could think now about

the trip outward to powindah places and the return just completed, which had

made ghufran necessary. Other worshipers made way for him as he went back to

the inner corridors and entered the slide passage that dropped him to the

central garden where he had asked his councillors to meet him.

It was a successful foray among the powindah, he thought.

Every time he left the inner worlds of the Bene Tleilax Waff felt himself to be

on lashkar, a war party seeking that ultimate revenge which his people named

secretly as Bodal (always capitalized and always the first thing reaffirmed in

ghufran or khel). This most recent lashkar had been exquisitely successful.

Waff emerged from the slide into a central garden filled with sunlight by

prismatic reflectors on the surrounding rooftops. A small fountain played its

visual fugue at the heart of a graveled circle. A low fence of white palings at

one side enclosed a closely cropped lawn, a space near enough to the fountain

that the air would be moist but not so close that the splashing water would

intrude on low-voiced conversation. Around the grassy enclosure, ten narrow

benches of an ancient plastic were arranged -- nine of them in a semicircle

facing a tenth bench set slightly apart.

Pausing at the edge of the grassy enclosure, Waff glanced around him, wondering

why he had never before felt quite this intense pleasure at sight of the place.

The dark blue of the benches was intrinsic to the material. Centuries of use

had worn the benches into soft curves along the arm rests and where countless

bottoms had planted themselves, but the color was just as strong in the worn

places as it was elsewhere.

Waff sat down facing his nine councillors, marshaling the words he knew he must

use. The document he had brought back from his latest lashkar, indeed, the very

reason for that excursion, could not have been more exquisitely timed. The

label on it and the words carried a mighty message for the Tleilaxu.

From an inner pocket Waff removed the thin sheaf of ridulian crystal. He noted

the quickened interest of his councillors: nine faces similar to his own,

Masheikhs of the innermost kehl. All reflected expectancy. They had read this

document in kehl: "The Atreides Manifesto." They had spent a night of

reflection on the manifesto's message. Now, the words must be confronted. Waff

placed the document on his lap.

"I propose to spread these words far and wide," Waff said.

"Without change?" That was Mirlat, the councillor closest to gholatransformation

among all of them. Mirlat no doubt aspired to Abdl and Mahai.

Waff focused on the councillor's wide jaws where the cartilage had grown over

the centuries as a visible mark of his current body's great age.

"Exactly as it has come into our hands," Waff said.

"Dangerous," Mirlat said.

Waff turned his head to the right, his childlike profile outlined against the

fountain for his councillors to observe. God's hand is on my right! The sky

above him was polished carnelian as though Bandalong, the most ancient city of

the Tleilaxu, had been built under one of those gigantic artificial covers

erected to protect pioneers on the harsher planets. When he returned his

attention to his councillors, Waff's features remained bland.

"Not dangerous to us," he said.

"A matter of opinion," Mirlat said.

"Then let us consider opinions," Waff said. "Have we a need to fear Ix or the

Fish Speakers? Indeed not. They are ours, although they do not know it."

Waff let this sink in; all of them knew that new Face Dancers sat in the highest

councils of Ix and Fish Speakers, the exchange undetected.

"The Guild will not move against us or oppose us because we are their only

secure source of melange," Waff said.

"Then what of these Honored Matres returned from the Scattering?" Mirlat

demanded.

"We will deal with them when it is required of us," Waff said. "And we will be

helped by the descendants of our own people who voluntarily went out into the

Scattering."

"The time does appear opportune," one of the other councillors murmured.

It was Torg the Younger who had spoken, Waff observed. Good. There was a vote

secured.

"The Bene Gesserit!" Mirlat snapped.

"I think the Honored Matres will remove the witches from our path," Waff said.

"Already they growl against each other like animals in the fighting pit."

"What if the author of that manifesto is identified?" Mirlat demanded. "What

then?"

Several heads nodded among the councillors. Waff marked them: people to be won

over.

"It is dangerous to be called Atreides in this age," he said.

"Except perhaps on Gammu," Mirlat said. "And the name Atreides has been signed

to that document!"

How odd, Waff thought. The CHOAM representative at the powindah conference that

had taken Waff away from the inner planets of Tleilax had emphasized that very

point. But most of CHOAM's people were secret atheists who looked on all

religion as suspect, and certainly the Atreides had been a potent religious

force. CHOAM worries had been almost palpable.

Waff recounted this CHOAM reaction now.

"This CHOAM hireling, damn his Godless soul, is right," Mirlat insisted. "The

document's insidious."

Mirlat will have to be dealt with, Waff thought. He lifted the manifesto from

his lap and read the first line aloud:

"In the beginning was the word and the word was God."

"Directly from the Orange Catholic Bible," Mirlat said. Once more, heads nodded

in worried agreement.

Waff showed the points of his canines in a brief smile. "Do you suggest that

there are those among the powindah who suspect the existence of the Shariat and

the Masheikhs?"

It felt good to speak these words openly, reminding his listeners that only here

among the innermost Tleilaxu were the old words and the old language preserved

without change. Did Mirlat or any of the others fear that Atreides words could

subvert the Shariat?

Waff posed this question, too, and saw the worried frowns.

"Is there one among you," Waff asked, "who believes that a single powindah knows

how we use the language of God?"

There! Let them think on that! Every one of them here had been wakened time

after time in ghola flesh. There was a fleshly continuity in this Council that

no other people had ever achieved. Mirlat himself had seen the Prophet with his

own eyes. Scytale had spoken to Muad'dib! Learning how the flesh could be

renewed and the memories restored, they had condensed this power into a single

government whose potency was confined lest it be demanded everywhere. Only the

witches had a similar storehouse of experience upon which to draw and they moved

with fearful caution, terrified that they might produce another Kwisatz

Haderach!

Waff said these things to his councillors, adding: "The time for action has

come."

When no one spoke disagreement, Waff said: "This manifesto has a single author.

Every analysis agrees. Mirlat?"

"Written by one person and that person a true Atreides, no doubt of it," Mirlat

agreed.

"All at the powindah conference affirmed this," Waff said. "Even a third-stage

Guild steersman agrees."

"But that one person has produced a thing that excites violent reactions among

diverse peoples," Mirlat argued.

"Have we ever questioned the Atreides talent for disruption?" Waff asked.

"When the powindah showed me this document I knew God had sent us a signal."

"Do the witches still deny authorship?" Torg the Younger asked.

How alertly apt he is, Waff thought.

"Every powindah religion is called into question by this manifesto," Waff said.

"Every faith except ours is left hanging in limbo."

"Exactly the problem!" Mirlat pounced.

"But only we know this," Waff said. "Who else even suspects the existence of

the Shariat?"

"The Guild," Mirlat said.

"They have never spoken of it and they never will. They know what our response

would be."

Waff lifted the sheaf of papers from his lap and again read aloud:

"Forces that we cannot understand permeate our universe. We see the shadows of

those forces when they are projected upon a screen available to our senses, but

understand them we do not."

"The Atreides who wrote that knows of the Shariat," Mirlat muttered.

Waff continued reading as though there had been no interruption:

"Understanding requires words. Some things cannot be reduced to words. There

are things that can only be experienced wordlessly."

As though he handled a holy relic, Waff returned the document to his lap.

Softly, so that his listeners were required to bend toward him and some cupped a

hand behind an ear, Waff said: "This says our universe is magical. It says all

arbitrary forms are transient and subject to magical changes. Science has led

us to this interpretation as though it placed us on a track from which we cannot

deviate."

He allowed these words to fester for a moment, then: "No Rakian priest of the

Divided God nor any other powindah charlatan can accept that. Only we know it

because our God is a magical God whose language we speak."

"We will be accused of the authorship," Mirlat said. The moment he had spoken,

Mirlat shook his head sharply from side to side. "No! I see it. I see what

you mean."

Waff held his silence. He could see that all of them were reflecting on their

Sufi origins, recalling the Great Belief and the Zensunni ecumenism that had

spawned the Bene Tleilax. The people of this kehl knew the God-given facts of

their origins but generations of secrecy assured that no powindah shared their

knowledge.

Words flowed silently through Waff's mind: "Assumptions based on understanding

contain belief in an absolute ground out of which all things spring like plants

growing from seeds."

Knowing that his councillors also recalled this catechism of the Great Belief,

Waff reminded them of the Zensunni admonition.

"Behind such assumptions lies a faith in words that the powindah do not

question. Only the Shariat question and we do so silently."

His councillors nodded in unison.

Waff inclined his head slightly and continued: "The act of saying that things

exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the

supreme belief."

"Powindah poison!" his councillors shouted.

He had them all now and Waff hammered home his victory by demanding: "What is

the Sufi-Zensunni Credo?"

They could not speak it but all reflected on it: To achieve s'tori no

understanding is needed. S'tori exists without words, without even a name.

In a moment, all of them looked up and exchanged knowing glances. Mirlat took

it upon himself to recite the Tleilaxu pledge:

"I can say God, but that is not my God. That is only a noise and no more potent

than any other noise."

"I now see," Waff said, "that you all sense the power that has fallen into our

hands through this document. Millions upon millions of copies already are being

circulated among the powindah."

"Who does this?" Mirlat asked.

"Who cares?" Waff countered. "Let the powindah chase after them, seeking their

origin, trying to suppress them, preaching against them. With each such action,

the powindah inject more power into these words."

"Should we not preach against these words, too?" Mirlat asked.

"Only if the occasion demands it," Waff said. "See you!" He slapped the papers

against his knees. "The powindah have constricted their awareness to its

tightest purpose and that is their weakness. We must insure that this manifesto

gains as wide a circulation as possible."

"The magic of our God is our only bridge," the councillors intoned.

All of them, Waff observed, had been restored to the central security of their

faith. It had been easily managed. No Masheikh shared the powindah stupidity

that whined: "In thy infinite grace, God, why me?" In one sentence, the

powindah invoked infinity and denied it, never once observing their own

foolishness

"Scytale," Waff said.

The youngest and most baby-faced of the councillors, seated at the far left as

was fitting, leaned forward eagerly.

"Arm the faithful," Waff said.

"I marvel that an Atreides has given us this weapon," Mirlat said. "How can it

be that the Atreides always fasten upon an ideal that enlists the billions who

must follow?"

"It is not the Atreides, it is God," Waff said. He lifted his arms then and

spoke the closing ritual: "The Masheikh have met in kehl and felt the presence

of their God."

Waff closed his eyes and waited for the others to leave. Masheikh! How good it

was to name themselves in kehl, speaking the language of Islamiyat, which no

Tleilaxu spoke outside his own secret councils; not even to Face Dancers did

they speak it. Nowhere in the Wekht of Jandola, not to the farthest reaches of

the Tleilaxu Yaghist, was there a living powindah who knew this secret.

Yaghist, Waff thought, rising from his bench. Yaghist, the land of the unruled.

He thought he could feel the document vibrating in his hand. This Atreides

Manifesto was the very kind of thing the masses of powindah would follow to

their doom.

Some days it's melange; some days it's bitter dirt.

-Rakian Aphorism

In her third year with the priests of Rakis, the girl Sheeana lay full length

atop a high curving dune. She peered into the morning distance where a great

rumbling friction could be heard. The light was a ghostly silver that frosted

the horizon with filmy haze. The night's chill still lay on the sand.

She knew the priests were watching her from the safety of their water-girded

tower some two kilometers behind her, but this gave her little concern. The

trembling of the sand beneath her body demanded full attention.

It's a big one, she thought. Seventy meters at least. A beautiful big one.

The gray stillsuit felt slick and smooth against her skin. It had none of the

abrasive patches of the old hand-me-down she had worn before the priests took

her into their care. She felt thankful for the fine stillsuit and the thick

robe of white and purple that covered it, but most of all she felt the

excitement of being here. Something rich and dangerous filled her at moments

such as this.

The priests did not understand what happened here. She knew this. They were

cowards. She glanced over her shoulder at the distant tower and saw sunglint on

lenses.

A precocious child of eleven standard years, slender and dark-skinned with sunstreaked

brown hair, she could visualize clearly what the priests saw through

their spying lenses.

They see me doing what they do not dare. They see me in the path of Shaitan. I

look very small on the sand and Shaitan looks very big. They can see him

already.

From the rasping sound, she knew that she, too, would soon see the giant worm.

Sheeana did not think of the approaching monster as Shai-hulud, God of the

sands, a thing the priests chanted each morning in obeisance to the pearl of

Leto II's awareness that lay encapsulated in each of the multi-ridged rulers of

the desert. She thought of the worms mainly as "they who spared me," or as

Shaitan.

They belonged to her now.

It was a relationship begun slightly more than three years ago during the month

of her eighth birthday, the Month Igat by the old calendar. Her village had

been a poor one, a pioneer venture built far beyond more secure barriers such as

the qanats and ring canals of Keen. Only a moat of damp sand guarded such

pioneer places. Shaitan avoided water but the sandtrout vector soon took away

any dampness. Precious moisture captured in windtraps had to be expended each

day to renew the barrier. Her village was a miserable cluster of shacks and

hovels with two small windtraps, adequate for drinking water but with only a

sporadic surplus that could be apportioned to the worm barrier.

That morning -- much like this morning, the night's chill sharp in her nose and

lungs, the horizon constricted by a ghostly haze -- most of the village children

had fanned out into the desert, there to seek bits and fragments of melange,

which Shaitan sometimes left behind in his passage. Two big ones had been heard

nearby in the night. Melange, even at modern deflated prices, could buy the

glazed bricks to line a third windtrap.

Each searching child not only looked for the spice but also sought those signs

which would reveal one of the old Fremen sietch strongholds. There were only

remnants of such places now but the rock barriers provided a greater security

against Shaitan. And some of the remnant sietch places were reputed to contain

lost hoards of melange. Every villager dreamed of such a discovery.

Sheeana, wearing her patched stillsuit and flimsy robe, went alone to the

northeast, toward the faraway smoky mound of air that told of the great city of

Keen with its moisture richness lifting into the sun-warmed breezes.

Hunting scraps of melange in the sand was largely a matter of focusing attention

into the nostrils. It was a form of concentration that left only bits of

awareness attuned to the rasping sand that told of Shaitan's approach. Leg

muscles moved automatically in the non-rhythmic walk that blended with the

desert's natural sounds.

At first, Sheeana did not hear the screaming. It fitted intimately into the

saltated friction of windblown sand across the barracans that concealed the

village from her sight. Slowly the sound penetrated her consciousness and then

it demanded her attention.

Many voices screaming!

Sheeana discarded the desert precaution of random strides. Moving swiftly as

her childish muscles would carry her, she scrambled up the slipface of the

barracan and stared along it toward that terrifying sound. She was in time to

see that which cut off the last of the screams.

Wind and sandtrout had dried a wide arc of the barrier at the far side of her

village. She could see the gap by the color difference. A wild worm had

penetrated the opening. It circled close inside the remaining dampness. The

gigantic flame-shadowed mouth scooped up people and hovels in a swiftly

tightening circle.

Sheeana saw the last survivors huddled at the center of this destruction, a

space already cleared of its rude hovels and tumbled with the remains of the

windtraps. Even as she watched, some of the people tried to break away into the

desert. Sheeana recognized her father among the frantic runners. None escaped.

The great mouth engulfed all before turning to level the last of the village.

Smoking sand remained and nothing else of the puny village that had dared to

claim a scrap of Shaitan's domain. The place where the village had been was as

unmarked by human habitation as it had been before anyone walked there.

Sheeana took a gasping breath, inhaling through her nose to preserve the

moisture of her body as any good child of the desert would do. She scanned the

horizon for a sign of the other children but Shaitan's track had left great

curves and loops all around the far side of the village. Not a single human

remained in view. She shouted, the high-pitched cry that would carry far

through the dry air. No response came back to her.

Alone.

She moved trancelike along the ridge of the dune toward where her village had

been. As she neared the place a great wave of cinnamon odor filled her

nostrils, carried on the wind that still dusted the tops of the dunes. She

realized then what had happened. The village had been sited disastrously atop a

pre-spice blow. As the great hoard far under the sand came to fruition,

expanding in an explosion of melange, Shaitan had come. Every child knew

Shaitan could not resist a spiceblow.

Rage and wild desperation began to fill Sheeana. Mindlessly, she raced down the

dune toward Shaitan, coming up behind the worm as it turned back through the dry

place where it had entered the village. Without thought, she dashed along

beside the tail, scrambled onto it and ran forward along the great ridged back.

At the hump behind its mouth, she crouched and beat her fists against the

unyielding surface.

The worm stopped.

Her anger suddenly converted to terror, Sheeana broke off pounding on the worm.

She realized only then that she had been screaming. A terrible sense of lonely

exposure filled her. She did not know how she had come here. She knew only

where she was and this gripped her with an agony of fear.

The worm continued quiescent on the sand.

Sheeana did not know what to do. At any moment, the worm could roll over and

crush her. Or it could burrow beneath the sand, leaving her on the surface to

be scooped up at leisure.

Abruptly, a long tremor worked its way down the worm's length from its tail to

Sheeana's position behind the mouth. The worm began to move ahead. It turned

in a wide arc and gathered speed on a course to the northeast.

Sheeana leaned forward and gripped the leading edge of a ring ridge on the

worm's back. She feared that any second it would slide beneath the sand. What

could she do then? But Shaitan did not burrow. As minutes passed without any

deviation from that straight and swift passage across the dunes, Sheeana found

her mind working once more. She knew about this ride. The priests of the

Divided God forbade it but the histories, both written and oral, said Fremen

rode thus in the ancient days. Fremen stood tall atop Shaitan's back supported

by slender poles with hooked ends. The priests decreed that this had been done

before Leto II shared His consciousness with the God of the desert. Now,

nothing was permitted that might demean the scattered bits of Leto II.

With a speed that astonished her, the worm carried Sheeana toward the mistdazzled

shape of Keen. The great city lay like a mirage on the distorted

horizon. Sheeana's threadbare robe whipped against the thin surface of her

patched stillsuit. Her fingers ached where she gripped the leading edge of the

giant ring. The cinnamon, burnt-rock and ozone of the worm's heat exchange

swept over her on shifts in the wind.

Keen began to gain definition ahead of her.

The priests will see me and be angry, she thought.

She identified the low brick structures that marked the first line of qanats

and, beyond them, the enclosed barrel-curve of a surface aqueduct. Above these

structures rose the walls of terraced gardens and the high profiles of giant

windtraps, then the temple complex within its own water barriers.

A day's march across open sand in little more than an hour!

Her parents and village neighbors had made this journey many times for trade and

to join in the dancing but Sheeana had only accompanied them twice. She

remembered mostly the dancing and the violence that followed. The size of Keen

filled her with awe. So many buildings! So many people! Shaitan could not

harm such a place as that.

But the worm plunged straight ahead as though it would ride over qanat and

aqueduct. Sheeana stared at the city rising higher and higher in front of her.

Fascination subdued her terror. Shaitan was not going to stop!

The worm ground to a halt.

The tubular surface vents of the qanat lay no more than fifty meters in front of

its gaping mouth. She smelled the hot cinnamon exhalations, heard the deep

rumblings of Shaitan's interior furnace.

It became apparent to her at last that the journey had ended. Slowly, Sheeana

released her grip on the ring. She stood, expecting any moment the worm would

renew its motion. Shaitan remained quiescent. Moving cautiously, she slid off

her perch and dropped to the sand. She paused there. Would it move now? She

held a vague idea of dashing for the qanat but this worm fascinated her.

Slipping and sliding in the disturbed sand, Sheeana moved around to the front of

the worm and stared into the fearsome mouth. Within the frame of crystal teeth

flames rolled forward and backward. A searing exhalation of spice odors swept

over her.

The madness of that first dash down off the dune and onto the worm came back to

Sheeana. "Damn you, Shaitan!" she shouted, shaking a fist at the awful mouth.

"What did we ever do to you?"

These were words she had heard her mother use at the destruction of a tuber

garden. No part of Sheeana's awareness had ever questioned that name, Shaitan,

nor her mother's fury. She was of the poorest dregs at the bottom of the Rakian

heap and she knew it. Her people believed in Shaitan first and Shai-hulud

second. Worms were worms and often much worse. There was no justice on the

open sand. Only danger lurked there. Poverty and fear of priests might drive

her people onto the perilous dunes but they moved even then with the same angry

persistence that had driven the Fremen.

This time, however, Shaitan had won.