Mother will explain matters to you."

"Lucilla?"

Abruptly, Duncan looked up at the ornate ceiling, then at the alcove and its

baroque clock. He remembered coming here with Teg and Lucilla. This place was

the same but it was different. "Harkonnens," he whispered. He sent a glowering

look at Teg. "Do you know how many of my family the Harkonnens tortured and

killed?"

"One of Taraza's Archivists gave me a report."

"A report? You think words can tell it?"

"No. But that was the only answer I had to your question."

"Damn you, Bashar! Why do you Atreides always have to be so truthful and

honorable?"

"I think it's bred into us."

"That's quite right." The voice was Lucilla's and came from behind Teg.

Teg did not turn. How much had she heard? How long had she been there?

Lucilla came up to stand beside Teg but her attention was on Duncan. "I see

that you've done it, Miles."

"Taraza's orders to the letter," Teg said.

"You have been very clever, Miles," she said. "Much more clever than I

suspected you could be. That mother of yours should have been severely punished

for what she taught you."

"Ahhhh, Lucilla the seductress," Duncan said. He glanced at Teg and returned

his attention to Lucilla. "Yes, now I can answer my other question -- what

she's supposed to do."

"They're called Imprinters," Teg said.

"Miles," Lucilla said, "if you have complicated my task in ways that prevent me

from carrying out my orders, I will have you roasted on a skewer."

The emotionless quality of her voice sent a shudder through Teg. He knew her

threat was a metaphor, but the implications in the threat were real.

"A punishment banquet!" Duncan said. "How nice."

Teg addressed himself to Duncan: "There's nothing romantic about what we've

done to you, Duncan. I've assisted the Bene Gesserit in more than one

assignment that left me feeling dirty, but never dirtier than this one."

"Silence!" Lucilla ordered. The full force of Voice was in the command.

Teg let it flow through him and past him as his mother had taught, then: "Those

of us who give our true loyalty to the Sisterhood have only one concern:

survival of the Bene Gesserit. Not survival of any individual but of the

Sisterhood itself. Deceptions, dishonesties -- those are empty words when the

question is the Sisterhood's survival."

"Damn that mother of yours, Miles!" Lucilla paid him the compliment of not

hiding her rage.

Duncan stared at Lucilla. Who was she? Lucilla? He felt his memories stirring

of themselves. Lucilla was not the same person . . . not the same at all, and

yet . . . bits and pieces were the same. Her voice. Her features. Abruptly,

he saw again the face of the woman he had glimpsed on the wall of his room at

the Keep.

"Duncan, my sweet Duncan."

Tears fell from Duncan's eyes. His own mother -- another Harkonnen victim.

Tortured . . . who knew what else? Never seen again by her "sweet Duncan."

"Gods, I wish I had one of them to kill right now," Duncan moaned.

Once more, he focused on Lucilla. Tears blurred her features and made the

comparisons easier. Lucilla's face blended with that of the Lady Jessica,

beloved of Leto Atreides. Duncan glanced at Teg, back to Lucilla, shaking the

tears from his eyes as he moved. The memory faces dissolved into that of the

real Lucilla standing in front of him. Similarities . . . but never the same.

Never again the same.

Imprinter.

He could guess the meaning. A pure Duncan Idaho wildness arose in him. "Is it

my child you want in your womb, Imprinter? I know you're not called mothers for

nothing."

Her voice cold, Lucilla said: "We'll discuss it another time."

"Let us discuss it in a congenial place," Duncan said. "Perhaps I'll sing you a

song. Not as good as old Gurney Halleck would do it but good enough to prepare

for a little bedsport."

"You find this amusing?" she asked.

"Amusing? No, but I am reminded of Gurney. Tell me, Bashar, have you brought

him back from the dead, too?"

"Not to my knowledge," Teg said.

"Ahhhh, there was a singing man!" Duncan said. "He could be killing you while

he sang and never miss a note."

Her manner still icy, Lucilla said: "We of the Bene Gesserit have learned to

avoid music. It evokes too many confusing emotions. Memory-emotions, of

course."

It was meant to awe him with a reminder of all those Other Memories and the Bene

Gesserit powers these implied but Duncan only laughed louder.

"What a shame that is," he said. "You miss so much of life." And he began

humming an old Halleck refrain:

"Review friends, troops long past review. . ."

But his mind whirled elsewhere with the rich new flavor of these reborn moments

and once more he felt the eager touch of something powerful that remained buried

within him. Whatever it was, it was violent and it concerned Lucilla, the

Imprinter. In imagination, he saw her dead and her body awash in blood.

People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called

happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our

designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give

it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most

people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to

call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape,

then people will follow.

-Leadership Secrets of the Bene Gesserit

With a silent Waff about twenty paces ahead of them, Odrade and Sheeana walked

down a weed-fringed road beside a spice-storage yard. All of them wore new

desert robes and glistening stillsuits. The gray nulplaz fence that defined the

yard beside them held bits of grass and cottony seedpods in its meshes. Looking

at the seedpods, Odrade thought of them as life trying to break through a human

intervention.

Behind them, the blocky buildings that had arisen around Dar-es-Balat baked in

the sunlight of early afternoon. Hot dry air burned her throat when she inhaled

too quickly. Odrade felt dizzy and at war within herself. Thirst nagged at

her. She walked as though balanced on the edge of a precipice. The situation

she had created at Taraza's command might explode momentarily.

How fragile it is!

Three forces balanced, not really supporting each other but joined by motives

that could shift in an instant and topple the whole alliance. The military

people sent by Taraza did not reassure Odrade. Where was Teg? Where was

Burzmali? For that matter, where was the ghola? He should be here by now. Why

had she been ordered to delay matters?

Today's venture would certainly delay matters! Although it had Taraza's

blessing, Odrade thought this excursion into the desert of the worms might be a

permanent delay. And there was Waff. If he survived, would there be any pieces

for him to pick up?

Despite the healing applications of the Sisterhood's best quicknit amplifiers,

Waff said his arms still ached where Odrade had broken them. He was not

complaining, merely providing information. He appeared to accept their fragile

alliance, even the modifications that incorporated the Rakian priestly cabal.

No doubt he was reassured that one of his own Face Dancers occupied the High

Priest's bench in the guise of Tuek. Waff spoke forcefully when he demanded his

"breeding mothers" from the Bene Gesserit and, consequently, withheld his part

of their bargain.

"Only a small delay while the Sisterhood reviews the new agreement," Odrade

explained. "Meanwhile . . ."

Today was "meanwhile."

Odrade put aside her misgivings and began to enter the mood of this venture.

Waff's behavior fascinated her, especially his reaction on meeting Sheeana:

quite plainly fearful and more than a little in awe.

The minion of his Prophet.

Odrade glanced sideways at the girl walking dutifully beside her. There was the

real leverage for shaping these events into the Bene Gesserit design.

The Sisterhood's breakthrough into the reality behind Tleilaxu behavior excited

Odrade. Waff's fanatic "true faith" gained shape with each new response from

him. She felt fortunate just to be here studying a Tleilaxu Master in a

religious setting. The very grit under Waff's feet ignited behavior that she

had been trained to identify.

We should have guessed, Odrade thought. The manipulations of our own

Missionaria Protectiva should have told us how the Tleilaxu did it: keeping

themselves to themselves, blocking off every intrusion for all of those plodding

millennia.

They did not appear to have copied the Bene Gesserit structure. And what other

force could do such a thing? It was a religion. The Great Belief!

Unless the Tleilaxu are using their ghola system as a kind of immortality.

Taraza could be right. Reincarnated Tleilaxu Masters would not be like Reverend

Mothers -- no Other Memories, only personal memories. But prolonged!

Fascinating!

Odrade looked ahead at Waff's back. Plodding. It appeared to come naturally to

him. She recalled that he called Sheeana "Alyama." Another confirming

linguistic insight into Waff's Great Belief. It meant "Blessed One." The

Tleilaxu had kept an ancient language not only alive but unchanged.

Did Waff not know that only powerful forces such as religions did that?

We have the roots of your obsession in our grasp, Waff! It is not unlike some

that we have created. We know how to manipulate such things for our own

purposes.

Taraza's communication burned in Odrade's awareness: "The Tleilaxu plan is

transparent: Ascendancy. The human universe must be made into a Tleilaxu

universe. They could not hope to achieve such a goal without help from the

Scattering. Ergo."

The Mother Superior's reasoning could not be denied. Even the opposition within

that deep schism that threatened to shatter the Sisterhood agreed. But the

thought of those human masses in the Scattering, their numbers exploding

exponentially, produced a lonely sense of desperation in Odrade.

We are so few compared to them.

Sheeana stooped and picked up a pebble. She looked at it a moment and then

threw it at the fence beside them. The pebble sailed through the meshes without

touching them.

Odrade took a firmer grip on herself. The sounds of their footsteps on the

blown sand that drifted across this little-used roadway seemed suddenly overloud.

The spindly causeway leading out over the Dar-es-Balat ring-qanat and

moat lay no more than two hundred paces ahead at the end of this narrow road.

Sheeana spoke: "I am doing this because you ordered it, Mother. But I still

don't know why."

Because this is the crucible where we test Waff and, through him, reshape the

Tleilaxu!

"It is a demonstration," Odrade said.

That was true. It was not the whole truth, but it served.

Sheeana walked head down, gaze intent on where she placed each step. Was this

how she always approached her Shaitan? Odrade wondered. Thoughtful and remote?

Odrade heard a faint thwocking sound high up behind her. The watchful

ornithopters were arriving. They would keep their distance, but many eyes would

observe this demonstration.

"I will dance," Sheeana said. "That usually calls a big one."

Odrade felt her heartbeat quicken. Would the "big one" continue to obey Sheeana

despite the presence of two companions?

This is suicidal madness!

But it had to be done: Taraza's orders.

Odrade glanced at the fenced spice yard beside them. The place appeared oddly

familiar. More than deja vu. Inner certainty informed by Other Memories told

her this place remained virtually unchanged from ancient times. The design of

the spice silos in the yard was as old as Rakis: oval tanks on tall legs, metal

and plaz insects waiting stilt-legged to leap upon their prey. She suspected an

unconscious message from the original designers: Melange is both boon and bane.

Beneath the silos, a sandy wasteland where no growth was permitted spread out

beside mud-walled buildings, an amoeba arm of Dar-es-Balat reaching almost to

the qanat edge. The Tyrant's long-hidden no-globe had produced a teeming

religious community that hid most of its activities behind windowless walls and

underground.

The secret working of our unconscious desires!

Once more, Sheeana spoke: "Tuek is different."

Odrade saw Waff's head lift sharply. He had heard. He would be thinking: Can

we conceal things from the Prophet's messenger?

Too many people already knew that a Face Dancer masqueraded as Tuek, Odrade

thought. The priestly cabal, of course, believed they were giving the Tleilaxu

enough netting in which to snare not only the Bene Tleilax but the Sisterhood as

well.

Odrade smelled the biting odors of chemicals that had been used to kill wild

growth in the spice storage yard. The odors forced her attention back to

necessities. She did not dare indulge in mental wanderings out here! It would

be so easy for the Sisterhood to become caught in its own trap.

Sheeana stumbled and emitted a small cry, more irritation than pain. Waff

turned his head sharply and looked at Sheeana before returning his attention to

the roadway. The child had merely stumbled on a break in the road surface, he

saw. Drifted sand concealed places where the roadway had been cracked. The

faery structure of the causeway ahead of him appeared sound, however. Not

substantial enough to support one of the Prophet's descendants, but more than

enough for a supplicant human to cross it into the desert.

Waff thought of himself chiefly as a supplicant.

I come as a beggar into the land of thy messenger, God.

He had his suspicions about Odrade. The Reverend Mother had brought him here to

drain him of his knowledge before killing him. With God's help, I may surprise

her yet. He knew his body was proof against an Ixian Probe, although she

obviously did not have such a cumbersome device on her person. But it was the

strength of his own will and confidence in God's grace that reassured Waff.

And what if the hand they hold out to us is held out in sincerity?

That, too, would be God's doing.

Alliance with the Bene Gesserit, firm control of Rakis: What a dream that was!

The Shariat ascendant at last and the Bene Gesserit as missionaries.

When Sheeana again missed her footing and uttered another small sound of

complaint, Odrade said: "Don't favor yourself, child!"

Odrade saw Waff's shoulders stiffen. He did not like that peremptory manner

with his "Blessed One." There was backbone in the little man. Odrade

recognized it as the strength of fanaticism. Even if the worm came to kill him,

Waff would not flee. Faith in God's will would carry him directly into his own

death -- unless he were shaken out of his religious security.

Odrade suppressed a smile. She could follow his thinking process: God will

soon reveal His Purpose.

But Waff was thinking about his cells growing in the slow renewal at Bandalong.

No matter what happened here, his cells would carry on for the Bene Tleilax . .

. and for God -- a serial Waff always serving the Great Belief.

"I can smell Shaitan, you know," Sheeana said.

"Right now?" Odrade looked up at the causeway ahead of them. Waff already was

a few steps onto that arching surface.

"No, only when he comes," Sheeana said.

"Of course you can, child. Anyone could."

"I can smell him a long way off."

Odrade inhaled deeply through her nose, sorting the smells from the background

of burnt flint: faint whiffs of melange . . . ozone, something distinctly acid.

She motioned for Sheeana to precede her single-file onto the causeway. Waff was

holding his steady twenty paces ahead. The causeway dipped down to the desert

some sixty meters ahead of him.

I will taste the sand at the first opportunity, Odrade thought. That will tell

me many things.

As she mounted the causeway over the water moat, she looked off to the southwest

at a low barrier along the horizon. Abruptly, Odrade was confronted by a

compelling Other Memory. There was none of the crispness in it of actual

vision, but she recognized it -- a mingling of images from the deepest sources

within her.

Damn! she thought. Not now!

There was no escape. Such intrusions came with purpose, an unavoidable demand

upon her awareness.

Warning!

She squinted at the horizon, allowing the Other Memory to superimpose itself: a

long-ago high barrier far away out there . . . people moving along the top of

it. There was a faery bridge in that memory-distance, insubstantial and

beautiful. It linked one part of that vanished barrier to another part and she

knew without seeing it that a river ran beneath that long-gone bridge. The

Idaho River! Now, the superimposed image provided movement: objects falling

from the bridge. They were too far away to identify but she had the labels for

this image projection now. With a sense of horror and elation, she identified

that scene.

The faery bridge was collapsing! Tumbling into the river below it.

This vision was not some random destruction. This was classical violence

carried in many memories, which had come down to her in the moments of spice

agony. Odrade could classify the finely tuned components of the image:

Thousands of her ancestors had watched that scene in imaginative reconstruction.

Not a real visual memory but an assemblage of accurate reports.

That is where it happened!

Odrade stopped and let the image projections have their way with her awareness.

Warning! Something dangerous had been identified. She did not try to dig out

the warning's substance. If she did that, she knew it could fall apart in

skeins, any one of which might be relevant, but the original certainty would

vanish.

This thing out there was fixed in the Atreides history. Leto II, the Tyrant,

had fallen to his dissolution from that faery bridge. The great worm of Rakis,

the Tyrant God Emperor himself, had been tumbled from that bridge on his wedding

peregrination.

There! Right there in the Idaho River beneath his destroyed bridge, the Tyrant

had been submerged in his own agony. Right there, the transubstantiation from

which the Divided God was born -- it all began there.

Why is that a warning?

Bridge and river had vanished from this land. The high wall that had enclosed

the Tyrant's dryland Sareer was eroded into a broken line on a heat-shimmering

horizon.

If a worm came now with its encapsulated pearl of the Tyrant's forever-dreaming

memory, would that memory be dangerous? So Taraza's opposition in the

Sisterhood argued.

"He will awaken!"

Taraza and her advisors denied even the possibility.

Still, this claxon from Odrade's Other Memories could not be shunted aside.

"Reverend Mother, why have we stopped?"

Odrade felt her awareness lurch back into an immediate present that demanded her

attention. Out there in that warning vision was where the Tyrant's endless

dream began but other dreams intruded. Sheeana stood in front of her with a

puzzled expression.

"I was looking out there." Odrade pointed. "That was where Shai-hulud began,

Sheeana."

Waff stopped at the end of the causeway, one step short of the encroaching sand

and now about forty paces ahead of Odrade and Sheeana. Odrade's voice brought

him to stiff alertness but he did not turn. Odrade could feel the displeasure

in his posture. Waff would not like even a hint of cynicism directed at his

Prophet. He always suspected cynicism from Reverend Mothers. Especially where

religious matters were concerned. Waff was not yet ready to accept that the

long-detested and feared Bene Gesserit might share his Great Belief. That

ground would have to be filled in with care-as was always the way with the

Missionaria Protectiva.

"They say there was a big river," Sheeana said.

Odrade heard the lilting note of derision in Sheeana's voice. The child learned

quickly!

Waff turned and scowled at them. He heard it, too. What was he thinking about

Sheeana now?

Odrade held Sheeana's shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. "There

was a bridge right there. The great wall of the Sareer was left open there to

permit the passage of the Idaho River. The bridge spanned that break."

Sheeana sighed. "A real river," she whispered.

"Not a qanat and too big for a canal," Odrade said.

"I've never seen a river," Sheeana said.

"That was where they dumped Shai-hulud into the river," Odrade said. She

gestured to her left. "Over on this side, many kilometers in that direction, he

built his palace."

"There's nothing over there but sand," Sheeana said.

"The palace was torn down in the Famine Times," Odrade said. "People thought

there was a hoard of spice in it. They were wrong, of course. He was much too

clever for that."

Sheeana leaned close to Odrade and whispered: "There is a great treasure of the

spice, though. The chantings tell about it. I've heard it many times. My . .

. they say it's in a cave."

Odrade smiled. Sheeana referred to the Oral History, of course. And she had

almost said: "My father . . ." meaning her real father who had died in this

desert. Odrade already had lured that story from the girl.

Still whispering close to Odrade's ear, Sheeana said: "Why is that little man

with us? I don't like him."

"It is necessary for the demonstration," Odrade said.

Waff took that moment to step off the causeway onto the first soft slope of open

sand. He moved with care but no visible hesitation. Once on the sand, he

turned, his eyes glistening in the hot sunlight, and stared first at Sheeana and

then at Odrade.

Still that awe in him when he looks at Sheeana, Odrade thought. What great

things he believes he will discover here. He will be restored. And the

prestige!

Sheeana sheltered her eyes with one hand and studied the desert.

"Shaitan likes the heat," Sheeana said. "People hide inside when it's hot but

that's when Shaitan comes."

Not Shai-hulud, Odrade thought. Shaitan! You predicted it well, Tyrant. What

else did you know about our times?

Was it really the Tyrant out there dormant in all of his worm descendants?

None of the analyses Odrade had studied gave a sure explanation of what had

driven one human being to make himself into a symbiote with that original worm

of Arrakis. What went through his mind in the millennia of that awful

transformation? Was any of that, even the smallest fragment, preserved in

today's Rakian worms?

"He is near, Mother," Sheeana said. "Do you smell him?"

Waff peered apprehensively at Sheeana.

Odrade inhaled deeply: a rich swelling of cinnamon on the bitter flint

undertones. Fire, brimstone -- the crystal-banked inferno of the great worm.

She stooped and brought up a pinch of blown sand to her tongue. All of the

background was there: the Dune of Other Memory and the Rakis of this day.

Sheeana pointed at an angle to her left, directly into the light breeze from the

desert. "Out there. We must hurry."

Without waiting for permission from Odrade, Sheeana ran lightly down the

causeway, past Waff and out onto the first dune. She stopped there until Odrade

and Waff caught up with her. Off the dune face she led them, up another with

sand clogging their passage, out along a great curving barracan with wisps of

dusty saltation blowing from its crest. Soon, they had put almost a kilometer

between themselves and the water-girded security of Dar-es-Balat.

Again, Sheeana stopped.

Waff came to a panting halt behind her. Perspiration glistened where his

stillsuit hood crossed his brow.

Odrade stopped a pace behind Waff. She took deep, calming breaths while she

peered past Waff to where Sheeana's attention was fixed.

A furious tide of sand had poured across the desert beyond the dune where they

stood, driven by a storm wind. Bedrock lay exposed in a long narrow avenue of

giant boulders, which lay scattered and upturned like the broken building blocks

of a mad promethean. Through this wild maze, the sand had poured like a river,

leaving its signature in deep scratches and gouges, then plunging off a low

escarpment to lose itself in more dunes.

"Down there," Sheeana said, pointing at the avenue of bedrock. Off their dune

she went, sliding and scrambling in spilled sand. At the bottom, she stopped

beside a boulder at least twice her height.

Waff and Odrade paused just behind her.

The slipface of another giant barracan, sinuous as the back of a sporting whale,

lifted into the silver-blue sky beside them.

Odrade used the pause to recompose her oxygen balance. That mad run had made

great demands on flesh. Waff, she noted, was red-faced and breathing deeply.

The flinty cinnamon smell was oppressive in the confined passage. Waff sniffed

and rubbed at his nose with the back of a hand. Sheeana lifted herself on one

toe, pivoted and darted ten paces across the rocky avenue. She put one foot up

on the sandy incline of the outer dune and lifted both arms to the sky. Slowly

at first and then with increasing tempo, she began to dance, moving up onto the

sand.

The 'thopter sounds grew louder overhead.

"Listen!" Sheeana called, not pausing in her dance.

It was not to the 'thopters that she called their attention. Odrade turned her

head to present both ears to a new sound intruding on their rock-tumbled maze.

A sibilant hiss, subterranean and muted by sand -- it became louder with

shocking swiftness. There was heat in it, a noticeable warming of the breeze

that twisted down their rocky avenue. The hissing swelled to a crescendo roar.

Abruptly, the crystal-ringed gaping of a gigantic mouth lifted over the dune

directly above Sheeana.

"Shaitan!" Sheeana screamed, not breaking the rhythm of her dance. "Here I am,

Shaitan!"

As it crested the dune, the worm dipped its mouth downward toward Sheeana. Sand

cascaded around her feet, forcing her to stop her dance. The smell of cinnamon

filled the rocky defile. The worm stopped above them.

"Messenger of God," Waff breathed.

Heat dried the perspiration on Odrade's exposed face and made the automatic

insulation of her stillsuit puff outward perceptibly. She inhaled deeply,

sorting the components behind that cinnamon assault. The air around them was

sharp with ozone and swiftly oxygen rich. Her senses at full alert, Odrade

stored impressions.

If I survive, she thought.

Yes, this was valuable data. The day might come when others would use it.

Sheeana backed out of the spilled sand onto the exposed rock. She resumed her

dance, moving more wildly, flinging her head at each turn. Hair whipped across

her face and each time she whirled to confront the worm, she screamed "Shaitan!"

Daintily, like a child on unfamiliar ground, the worm once more moved forward.

It slid across the dune crest, curled itself down onto the exposed rock and

presented its burning mouth slightly above and about two paces from Sheeana.

As it stopped, Odrade became conscious of the deep furnace rumbling of the worm.

She could not tear her gaze away from the reflections of lambent orange flames

within the creature. It was a cave of mysterious fire.

Sheeana stopped her dance. She clenched both fists at her sides and stared back

at the monster she had summoned.

Odrade took timed breaths, the controlled pacing of a Reverend Mother gathering

all of her powers. If this was the end -- well, she had obeyed Taraza's orders.

Let the Mother Superior learn what she would from the watchers overhead.

"Hello, Shaitan," Sheeana said. "I have brought a Reverend Mother and a man of

the Tleilaxu with me."

Waff slumped to his knees and bowed.

Odrade slipped past him to stand beside Sheeana.

Sheeana breathed deeply. Her face was flushed.

Odrade heard the click-ticking of their overworked stillsuits. The hot,

cinnamon-drenched air around them was charged with the sounds of this meeting,

all dominated by the murmurous burning within the quiescent worm.

Waff came up beside Odrade, his trancelike gaze fixed on the worm.

"I am here," he whispered.

Odrade silently cursed him. Any unwarranted noise could attract this beast onto

them. She knew what Waff was thinking, though: No other Tleilaxu had ever

stood this close to a descendant of his Prophet. Not even the Rakian priests

had ever done this!

With her right hand, Sheeana made a sudden downward gesture. "Down to us,

Shaitan!" she said.

The worm lowered its gaping mouth until the internal firepit filled the rocky

defile in front of them.

Her voice little more than a whisper, Sheeana said: "See how Shaitan obeys me,

Mother?"

Odrade could feel Sheeana's control over the worm, a pulse of hidden language

between child and monster. It was uncanny.

Her voice rising in impudent arrogance, Sheeana said: "I will ask Shaitan to

let us ride him!" She scrambled up the slipface of the dune beside the worm.

Immediately, the great mouth lifted to follow her movements. "Stay there!"

Sheeana shouted. The worm stopped.

It's not her words that command it, Odrade thought. Something else . . .

something else . . .

"Mother, come with me," Sheeana called.

Thrusting Waff ahead of her, Odrade obeyed. They scrambled up the sandy slope

behind Sheeana. Dislodged sand spilled down beside the waiting worm, piling up

in the defile. Ahead of them, the worm's tapering tail curved along the dune

crest. Sheeana led them at a sand-clotted trot to the very tip of the thing.

There, she gripped the leading edge of a ring in the corrugated surface and

scrambled up onto her desert beast.

More slowly, Odrade and Waff followed. The worm's warm surface felt non-organic

to Odrade, as though it were some Ixian artifact.

Sheeana skipped forward along the back and squatted just behind its mouth where

the rings bulged thick and wide.

"Like this," Sheeana said. She leaned forward and clutched beneath the leading

edge of a ring, lifting it slightly to expose pink softness underneath.

Waff obeyed her immediately but Odrade moved with more caution, storing

impressions. The ring surface was as hard as plascrete and covered with tiny

encrustations. Odrade's fingers probed the softness under the leading edge. It

pulsed faintly. The surface around them lifted and fell with an almost

imperceptible rhythm. Odrade heard a tiny rasping with each movement.

Sheeana kicked the worm surface behind her.

"Shaitan, go!" she said.

The worm did not respond.

"Please, Shaitan," Sheeana pleaded.

Odrade heard the desperation in Sheeana's voice. The child was so confident of

her Shaitan but Odrade knew that the girl had been allowed to ride only that

first time. Odrade had the full story from death-wish to priestly confusion but

none of it told her what would happen next.

Abruptly, the worm lurched into motion. It lifted sharply, twisted to the left

and made a tight curve out of the rocky defile, then moved directly away from

Dar-es-Balat into the open desert.

"We go with God!" Waff shouted.

The sound of his voice shocked Odrade. Such wildness! She sensed the power in

his faith. The thwock-thwock of following ornithopters came from overhead. The

wind of their passage whipped past Odrade full of ozone and the hot furnace

odors stirred up by the friction of the rushing behemoth.

Odrade glanced over her shoulders at the 'thopters, thinking how easy it would

be for enemies to rid this planet of a troublesome child, an equally troublesome

Reverend Mother and a despised Tleilaxu -- all in one violently vulnerable

moment on the open desert. The priestly cabal might attempt it, she knew,

hoping that Odrade's own watchers up there would be too late to prevent it.

Would curiosity and fear hold them back?

Odrade admitted to a mighty curiosity herself.

Where is this thing taking us?

Certainly, it was not headed toward Keen. She lifted her head and peered past

Sheeana. On the horizon directly ahead lay that tell-tale indentation of fallen

stones, that place where the Tyrant had been spilled from the surface of his

faery bridge.

The place of Other Memory warning.

Abrupt revelation locked Odrade's mind. She understood the warning. The Tyrant

had died at a place of his own choosing. Many deaths had left their imprint on

that place but his the greatest. The Tyrant chose his peregrination route with

purpose. Sheeana had not told her worm to go there. It moved that way of its

own volition. The magnet of the Tyrant's endless dream drew it back to the

place where the dream began.

There was this drylander who was asked which was more important, a literjon of

water or a vast pool of water? The drylander thought a moment and then said:

"The literjon is more important. No single person could own a great pool of

water. But a literjon you could hide under your cloak and run away with it. No

one would know."

-The Jokes of Ancient Dune, Bene Gesserit Archives

It was a long session in the no-globe's practice hall, Duncan in a mobile cage

driving the exercise, adamant that this particular training series would

continue until his new body had adapted to the seven central attitudes of combat

response against attack from eight directions. His green singlesuit was dark

with perspiration. Twenty days they had been at this one lesson!

Teg knew the ancient lore that Duncan revived here but knew it by different

names and sequencing. Before they had been into it five days, Teg doubted the

superiority of modern methods. Now, he was convinced that Duncan did something

completely new -- mixing the old with what he had learned in the Keep.

Teg sat at his own control console, as much an observer as a participant. The

consoles that guided the dangerous shadow forces in this practice had required

mental adjustment by Teg, but he felt familiar with them now and moved the

attack with facility and frequent inspiration.

A simmering Lucilla glanced into the hall occasionally. She watched and then

left without comment. Teg did not know what Duncan was doing about the

Imprinter but there was a feeling that the reawakened ghola played a delaying

game with his seductress. She would not allow that to continue long, Teg knew,

but it was out of his hands. Duncan no longer was "too young" for the

Imprinter. That young body carried a mature male mind with experiences from

which to make his own decisions.

Duncan and Teg had been on the floor with only one break all morning. Hunger

pangs gnawed at Teg but he felt reluctant to halt the session. Duncan's

abilities had climbed to a new level today and he was still improving.

Teg, seated in a fixed console's cage seat, twisted the attack forces into a

complex maneuver, striking from left, right, and above.

The Harkonnen armory had produced an abundance of these exotic weapons and

training instruments, some of which Teg had known only from historical accounts.

Duncan knew them all, apparently, and with an intimacy that Teg admired.

Hunter-seekers geared to penetrate a force shield were part of the shadow system

they used now.

"They automatically slow down to go through the shield," Duncan explained in his

young-old voice. "Too fast a strike, of course, and the shield repels."

"Shields of that type have almost gone out of fashion," Teg said. "A few

societies maintain them as a kind of sport but otherwise . . ."

Duncan executed a riposte of blurred speed that dropped three hunter-seekers to

the floor damaged enough to require the no-globe's maintenance services. He

removed the cage and damped the system but left it idling while he came over to

Teg, breathing deeply but easily. Looking past Teg, Duncan smiled and nodded.

Teg whirled but there was only the flick of Lucilla's gown as she left them.

"It's like a duel," Duncan said. "She tries to thrust through my guard and I

counterattack."

"Have a care," Teg said. "That's a full Reverend Mother."

"I've known a few of them in my time, Bashar."

Once more, Teg found himself confounded. He had been warned that he would have

to readjust to this different Duncan Idaho but he had not fully anticipated the

constant mental demands of that readjustment. The look in Duncan's eyes right

now was disconcerting.

"Our roles are changed a bit, Bashar," Duncan said. He picked up a towel from

the floor and mopped his face.

"I'm no longer sure of what I can teach you," Teg admitted. He wished, though,

that Duncan would take his warning about Lucilla. Did Duncan imagine that the

Reverend Mothers of those ancient days were identical with the women of today?

Teg thought that highly unlikely. In the way of all other life, the Sisterhood

evolved and changed.

It was obvious to Teg that Duncan had come to a decision about his place in

Taraza's machinations. Duncan was not merely biding his time. He was training

his body to a personally chosen peak and he had made a judgment about the Bene

Gesserit.

He has made that judgment on insufficient data, Teg thought.

Duncan dropped the towel and looked at it for a moment. "Let me be the judge of

what you can teach me, Bashar." He turned and stared narrowly at Teg seated in

the cage.

Teg inhaled deeply. He smelled the faint ozone from all of this durable

Harkonnen equipment ticking away in readiness for Duncan's return to action.

The ghola's perspiration carried a bitter dominant.

Duncan sneezed.

Teg sniffed, recognizing the omnipresent dust of their activities. It could be

more tasted than smelled at times. Alkaline. Over it all was the fragrance of

the air scrubbers and oxy regenerators. There was a distinct floral aroma built

into the system but Teg could not identify the flower. In the month of their

occupation, the globe also had taken on human odors, slowly insinuated into the

original composite -- perspiration, cooking smells, the never-quite-suppressed

acridity of waste reclamation. To Teg, these reminders of their presence were

oddly offensive. And he found himself sniffing and listening for sounds of

intrusion -- something more than the echoing passage of their own footsteps and

the subdued metallic clashings from the kitchen area.

Duncan's voice intruded: "You're an odd man, Bashar."

"What do you mean?"

"There's your resemblance to the Duke Leto. The facial identity is weird. He

was a bit shorter than you but the identity . . ." He shook his head, thinking

of the Bene Gesserit designs behind those genetic markers in Teg's face -- that

hawk look, the crease lines and that inner thing, that certainty of moral

superiority.

How moral and how superior?

According to the records he had seen at the Keep (and Duncan was sure they had

been placed there especially for him to discover) Teg's reputation was an almost

universal thing throughout human society of this age. At the Battle of Markon,

it had been enough for the enemy to know that Teg was there opposite them in

person. They sued for terms. Was that true?

Duncan looked at Teg in the console cage and put this question to him.

"Reputation can be a beautiful weapon," Teg said. "It often spills less blood."

"At Arbelough, why did you go to the front with your troops?" Duncan asked.

Teg showed surprise. "Where did you learn that?"

"At the Keep. You might have been killed. What would that have served?"

Teg reminded himself that this young flesh standing over him held unknown

knowledge, which must guide Duncan's quest for information. It was in that

unknown area, Teg suspected, that Duncan was most valuable to the Sisterhood.

"We took severe losses at Arbelough on the preceding two days," Teg said. "I

failed to make a correct assessment of the enemy's fear and fanaticism."

"But the risk of . . ."

"My presence at the front said to my own people: 'I share your risks.' "

"The Keep's records said Arbelough had been perverted by Face Dancers. Patrin

told me you vetoed your aides when they urged you to sweep the planet clean,

sterilize it and --"

"You were not there, Duncan."

"I am trying to be. So you spared your enemy against all advice."

"Except for the Face Dancers."

"But then you walked unarmed through the enemy ranks and before they had laid

down their weapons."

"To assure them they would not be mistreated."

"That was very dangerous."

"Was it? Many of them came over to us for the final assault on Kroinin where we

broke the anti-Sisterhood forces."

Duncan stared hard at Teg. Not only did this old Bashar resemble Duke Leto in

appearance, but he also had that same Atreides charisma: a legendary figure

even among his former enemies. Teg had said he was descended from Ghanima of

the Atreides, but there had to be more in it than that. The ways of the Bene

Gesserit breeding mastery awed him.

"We will go back to the practice now," Duncan said.

"Don't damage yourself."

"You forget, Bashar. I remember a body as young as this one and right here on

Giedi Prime."

"Gammu!"

"It was properly renamed but my body still recalls the original. That is why

they sent me here. I know it."

Of course he would know it, Teg thought.

Restored by the brief respite, Teg introduced a new element in the attack and

sent a sudden burn-line against Duncan's left side.

How easily Duncan parried the attack!

He was using an oddly mixed variation on the five attitudes, each response

seemingly invented before it was required.

"Each attack is a feather floating on the infinite road," Duncan said. His

voice gave no hint of exertion. "As the feather approaches, it is diverted and

removed."

As he spoke, he parried the shifting attack and countered.

Teg's Mentat logic followed the movements into what he recognized as dangerous

places. Dependencies and key logs!

Duncan shifted over to attack, moving ahead of it, pacing his movements rather

than responding. Teg was forced to his utmost abilities as the shadow forces

burned and flickered across the floor. Duncan's weaving figure in its mobile

cage danced along the space between them. Not one of Teg's hunter-seekers or

burn-line counters touched the moving figure. Duncan was over them, under them,

seeming totally unafraid of the real pain that this equipment could bring him.

Once more, Duncan increased the speed of his attack.

A bolt of pain shot up Teg's left arm from his hand on the controls to his

shoulder.

With a sharp exclamation, Duncan shut down the equipment. "Sorry, Bashar. That

was superb defense on your part but I'm afraid age defeated you."

Once more, Duncan crossed the floor and stood over Teg.

"A little pain to remind me of the pain I caused you," Teg said. He rubbed his

tingling arm.

"Blame the heat of the moment," Duncan said. "We have done enough for now."

"Not quite," Teg said. "It is not enough to strengthen only your muscles."

At Teg's words Duncan felt an alerting sensation throughout his body. He sensed

the disorganized touch of that uncompleted thing that the reawakening had failed

to arouse. Something crouched within him, Duncan thought. It was like a coiled

spring waiting for release.

"What more would you do?" Duncan asked. His voice sounded hoarse.

"Your survival is in the balance here," Teg said. "All of this is being done to

save you and get you to Rakis."

"For Bene Gesserit reasons, which you say you do not know!"

"I don't know them, Duncan."

"But you're a Mentat."

"Mentats require data to make projections."

"Do you think Lucilla knows?"

"I'm not sure but let me warn you again about her. She has orders to get you to

Rakis prepared for what you must do there."

"Must?" Duncan shook his head from side to side. "Am I not my own person with

rights to make my own choices? What do you think you've reawakened here, a

damned Face Dancer capable only of obeying orders?"

"Are you telling me you will not go to Rakis?"

"I'm telling you I will make my own decisions when I know what it is I'm to do.

I'm not a hired assassin."

"You think I am, Duncan?"

"I think you're an honorable man, someone to be admired. Give me credit for

having my own standards of duty and honor."

"You've been given another chance at life and --"

"But you are not my father and Lucilla is not my mother. Imprinter? For what

does she hope to prepare me?"

"It may be that she does not know, Duncan. Like me, she may have only part of

the design. Knowing how the Sisterhood works, that is highly likely."

"So the two of you just train me and deliver me to Arrakis. Here's the package

you ordered!"

"This is a far different universe than the one where you were originally born,"

Teg said. "As it was in your day, we still have a Great Convention against

atomics and the pseudoatomics of lasgun-shield interaction. We still say that

sneak attacks are forbidden. There are pieces of paper scattered around to

which we have put our names and we --"

"But the no-ships have changed the basis for all of those treaties," Duncan

said. "I think I learned my history fairly well at the Keep. Tell me, Bashar,

why did Paul's son have the Tleilaxu provide him with my ghola-self, hundreds of

me! for all those thousands of years?"

"Paul's son?"

"The Keep's records call him the God Emperor. You name him Tyrant."

"Oh. I don't think we know why he did it. Perhaps he was lonely for someone

from --"

"You brought me back to confront the worm!" Duncan said.

Is that what we're doing? Teg wondered. He had considered this possibility more

than once, but it was only a possibility, not a projection. Even so, there had

to be something more in Taraza's design. Teg sensed this with every fiber of

his Mentat training. Did Lucilla know? Teg did not delude himself that he

could pry revelation from a full Reverend Mother. No . . . he would have to

bide his time, wait and watch and listen. In his own way, this obviously was

what Duncan had decided. It was a dangerous course if he thwarted Lucilla!

Teg shook his head. "Truly, Duncan, I do not know."

"But you follow orders."

"By my oath to the Sisterhood."

"Deceptions, dishonesties -- those are empty words when the question is the

Sisterhood's survival," Duncan quoted him.

"Yes, I said that," Teg agreed.

"I trust you now because you said it," Duncan said. "But I do not trust

Lucilla."

Teg dropped his chin to his breast. Dangerous . . . dangerous . . .

Much more slowly than once he had done, Teg brought his attention out of such

thoughts and went through the mental cleansing process, concentrating on the

necessities laid upon him by Taraza.

"You are my Bashar."

Duncan studied the Bashar for a moment. Fatigue lines were obvious on the old

man's face. Duncan was reminded suddenly of Teg's great age, wondering if it

ever tempted men such as Teg to seek out the Tleilaxu and become gholas.

Probably not. They knew they might become Tleilaxu puppets.

This thought flooded Duncan's awareness, holding him immobile so plainly that

Teg, lifting his gaze, saw it at once.

"Is something wrong?"

"The Tleilaxu have done something to me, something that has not yet been

exposed," Duncan husked.

"Exactly what we feared!" It was Lucilla speaking from the doorway behind Teg.

She advanced to within two paces of Duncan. "I have been listening. You two

are very informative."

Teg spoke quickly, hoping to blunt the anger he sensed in her. "He has mastered

the seven attitudes today."

"He strikes like fire," Lucilla said, "but remember that we of the Sisterhood

flow like water and fill in every place." She glanced down at Teg. "Do you not

see that our ghola has gone beyond the attitudes?"

"No fixed position, no attitude," Duncan said.

Teg looked up sharply at Duncan, who stood with his head erect, his forehead

smooth, his eyes clear as he returned Teg's gaze. Duncan had grown surprisingly

in the short time since being awakened to his original memories.

"Damn you, Miles!" Lucilla muttered.

But Teg kept his attention on Duncan. The youth's entire body seemed wired to a

new kind of vigor. There was a poise about him that had not been there before.

Duncan shifted his attention to Lucilla. "You think you will fail in your

assignment?"

"Surely not," she said. "You're still a male."

And she thought: Yes, that young body must flow hot with the juices of

procreation. Indeed, the hormonal igniters are all intact and susceptible to

arousing. His present stance, though, and the way he looked at her, forced her

to raise her awareness to new, energy-demanding levels.

"What have the Tleilaxu done to you?" she demanded.

Duncan spoke with a flippancy that he did not feel: "O Great Imprinter, if I

knew I would tell you."

"You think it's a game we play?" she demanded.

"I do not know what it is we play at!"

"By now, many people know we are not on Rakis where we would have been expected

to flee," she said.

"And Gammu swarms with people returned from the Scattering," Teg said. "They

have the numbers to explore many possibilities here."

"Who would suspect the existence of a lost no-globe from the Harkonnen days?"

Duncan asked.

"Anyone who made the association between Rakis and Dar-es-Balat," Teg said.

"If you think this is a game, consider the urgencies of the play," Lucilla said.

She pivoted on one foot to concentrate on Teg. "And you have disobeyed Taraza!"

"You are wrong! I have done exactly what she ordered me to do. I am her Bashar

and you forget how well she knows me."

With an abruptness that shocked her to silence, the subtleties of Taraza's

maneuverings impressed themselves upon Lucilla . . .

We are pawns!

What a delicate touch Taraza always demonstrated in the way she moved her pawns

about. Lucilla did not feel diminished by the realization that she was a pawn.

That was knowledge bred and trained into every Reverend Mother of the

Sisterhood. Even Teg knew it. Not diminished, no. The thing around them had

escalated in Lucilla's awareness. She felt awed by Teg's words. How shallow

had been her previous view of the forces within which they were enmeshed. It

was as though she had seen only the surface of a turbulent river and, from that,

had glimpsed the currents beneath. Now, however, she felt the flow all around

her and a dismaying realization.

Pawns are expendable.

By your belief in singularities, in granular absolutes, you deny movement, even

the movement of evolution! While you cause a granular universe to persist in

your awareness, you are blind to movement. When things change, your absolute

universe vanishes, no longer accessible to your self-limiting perceptions. The

universe has moved beyond you.

-First Draft, Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives

Taraza put her hands beside her temples, palms flat in front of her ears, and

pressed inward. Even her fingers could feel the tiredness in there: right

between the hands -- fatigue. A brief flicker of eyelids and she fell into the

relaxation trance. Hands against head were the sole focal points of fleshly

awareness.

One hundred heartbeats.

She had practiced this regularly since learning it as a child, one of her first

Bene Gesserit skills. Exactly one hundred heartbeats. After all of those years

of practice, her body could pace them automatically by an unconscious metronome.

When she opened her eyes at the count of one hundred, her head felt better. She

hoped she would have at least two more hours in which to work before fatigue

overcame her once more. Those one hundred heartbeats had given her extra years

of wakefulness in her lifetime.

Tonight, though, thinking of that old trick sent her memories spiraling

backward. She found herself caught in her own childhood, the dormitory with the

Sister Proctor pacing the aisle at night to make sure they all remained properly

asleep in their beds.

Sister Baram, the Night Proctor.

Taraza had not thought of that name in years. Sister Baram had been short and

fat, a failed Reverend Mother. Not for any immediately visible reason, but the

Medical Sisters and their Suk doctors had found something. Baram had never been

permitted to try the spice agony. She had been quite forthcoming about what she

knew of her defect. It had been discovered while she was still in her teens:

periodic nerve tremors, which manifested when she began to sink into sleep. A

symptom of something deeper that had caused her to be sterilized. The tremors

made Baram wakeful in the night. Aisle patrol was a logical assignment.

Baram had other weaknesses not detected by her superiors. A wakeful child

toddling to the washroom could lure Baram into low-voiced conversation. Naive

questions elicited mostly naive answers, but sometimes Baram imparted useful

knowledge. She had taught Taraza the relaxation trick.

One of the older girls had found Sister Baram dead in the washroom one morning.

The Night Proctor's tremors had been the symptom of a fatal defect, a fact

important mostly to the Breeding Mistresses and their endless records.

Because the Bene Gesserit did not usually schedule the full "solo death

education" until well into the acolyte stage, Sister Baram was the first dead

person Taraza had seen. Sister Baram's body had been found partly beneath a

washbasin, the right cheek pressed to the tile floor, her left hand caught in

the plumbing under a sink. She had tried to pull her failing body upright and

death had caught her in the attempt, exposing that last motion like an insect

caught in amber.

When they rolled Sister Baram over to carry her away, Taraza saw the red mark

where a cheek had been pressed to the floor. The Day Proctor explained this

mark with a scientific practicality. Any experience could be turned into data

for these potential Reverend Mothers to incorporate later into their acolyte

"Conversations With Death."

Post Mortem lividity.

Seated at her Chapter House table, all of those years removed from the event,

Taraza was forced to use her carefully focused powers of concentration to dispel

that memory, leaving her free to deal with the work spread before her. So many

lessons. So fearfully full, her memory. So many lifetimes stored there. It

reaffirmed her sense of being alive to see the work in front of her. Things to

do. She was needed. Eagerly, Taraza bent to her labors.

Damn the necessity to train the ghola on Gammu!

But this ghola required it. Familiarity with dirt underfoot preceded the

required restoration of that original persona.

It had been wise to send Burzmali into the Gammu arena. If Miles had really

found a hideaway . . . if he were to emerge now, he would need all the help he

could get. Once more, she considered whether it was time to play the prescient

game. So dangerous! And the Tleilaxu had been alerted that their replacement

ghola might be required.

"Ready him for delivery."

Her mind swung to the Rakis problem. That fool Tuek should have been monitored

more carefully. How long could a Face Dancer safely impersonate him? There was

no faulting Odrade's on-scene decision, though. She had put the Tleilaxu into

an untenable position. The impersonator could be exposed, plunging the Bene

Tleilax into a sink of hatred.

The game within the Bene Gesserit design had become very delicate. For

generations now, they had held out to the Rakian priesthood the bait of a Bene

Gesserit alliance. But now! The Tleilaxu must consider that they had been

chosen instead of the priests. Odrade's three-cornered alliance, let the

priests think every Reverend Mother would take the Oath of Subservience to the

Divided God. The Priestly Council would stutter with excitement at the

prospect. The Tleilaxu, of course, saw the chance to monopolize melange,

controlling at last the one source independent of them.

A rap at Taraza's door told her the acolyte had arrived with tea. It was a

standing order when the Mother Superior worked late. Taraza glanced at the

table chrono, an Ixian device so accurate it would gain or lose only one second

in a century: 1:23:11 A.M.

She called to admit the acolyte. The girl, a pale blond with coldly observant

eyes, entered and bent to arrange the contents of her tray beside Taraza.

Taraza ignored the girl and stared at the work remaining on the table. So much

to do. Work was more important than sleep. But her head ached and she felt the

telltale dazed sensation akin to a stunned brain that told her the tea would

provide little relief. She had worked herself into mental starvation and it

would have to be put right before she could even stand. Her shoulders and back

throbbed.

The acolyte started to leave but Taraza motioned for her to wait. "Rub my back

please, Sister."

The acolyte's educated hands slowly worked out the constrictions in Taraza's

back. Good girl. Taraza smiled at this thought. Of course she was good. No

lesser creature could be assigned to the Mother Superior.

When the girl had gone, Taraza sat silently in deep thought. So little time.

She begrudged every minute of sleep. There was no escaping it, though.

Eventually, the body made its unavoidable demands. She had pressed herself

beyond easy recuperation for days now. Ignoring the tea laid out beside her,

Taraza arose and went down the hall to her tiny sleeping cell. There, she left

a call with the Night Guard for 11:00 A.M. and composed herself fully robed on

the hard cot.

Quietly, she regulated her breathing, insulated her senses from distraction and

fell into the between-state.

Sleep did not come.

She went through her full repertoire and still sleep evaded her.

Taraza lay there for a long time, recognizing at last the futility of willing

herself to sleep with any of the techniques at her disposal. The between-state

would have to do its slow mending first. Meanwhile, her mind continued to

churn.

The Rakian priesthood she had never considered to be a central problem. Already

caught up in religion, the priests could be manipulated by religion. They saw

the Bene Gesserit chiefly as a power that could enforce their dogma. Let them

continue to think this. It was bait that would blind them.

Damn that Miles Teg! Three months of silence, and no favorable report from

Burzmali, either. Charred ground, signs of a no-ship's lift-off. Where could

Teg have gone? The ghola might be dead. Teg had never before done such a

thing. Old Reliability. That was why she had chosen him. That and his

military skills and his likeness to the old Duke Leto -- all of the things they

had prepared in him.

Teg and Lucilla. A perfect team.

If not dead, was the ghola beyond their reach? Did the Tleilaxu have him?

Attackers from the Scattering? Many things were possible. Old Reliability.

Silent. Was his silence a message? If so, what was he trying to say'?

With both Schwangyu and Patrin dead, there was the smell of conspiracy around

the Gammu events, Could Teg be someone planted long ago by the Sisterhood's

enemies? Impossible! His own family was proof against such doubts. Teg's

daughter at the family home was as mystified as anyone.

Three months now and not a word.

Caution. She had warned Teg to exercise the utmost caution in protecting the

ghola. Teg had seen the great danger on Gammu. Schwangyu's last reports made

that clear.

Where could Teg and Lucilla have taken the ghola?

Where had they acquired a no-ship? Conspiracy?

Taraza's mind kept circling around her deep suspicions. Was it Odrade's doing?

Then who conspired with Odrade? Lucilla? Odrade and Lucilla had never met

before that brief encounter on Gammu. Or had they? Who bent close to Odrade

and breathed a mutual air weighted with whispers? Odrade gave no sign, but what

proof was that? Lucilla's loyalty had never been doubted. They both functioned

perfectly as assigned. But so would conspirators.

Facts! Taraza hungered for facts. The bed rustled beneath her and her senseinsulation

collapsed, shattered by worries as much as by the sound of her own

movements. Resignedly, Taraza once more composed herself for relaxation.

Relaxation and then sleep.

Ships from the Scattering flitted through Taraza's fatigue-fogged imagination.

Lost Ones returned in their uncounted no-ships. Was that where Teg found a

ship? This possibility was being explored as quietly as they could on Gammu and

elsewhere. She tried counting imaginary ships but they refused to proceed in

the orderly fashion required for sleep induction. Taraza came alert without

moving on her cot.

Her deepest mind was trying to reveal something. Fatigue had blocked that path

of communication but now -- she sat up fully awake.

The Tleilaxu had been dealing with people returned from the Scattering. With

these whorish Honored Mattes and with returned Bene Tleilax as well. Taraza

sensed a single design behind events. The Lost Ones did not return out of

simple curiosity about their roots. The gregarious desire to reunite all of

humankind was not enough in itself to bring them back. The Honored Matres

clearly came with dreams of conquest.

But what if the Tleilaxu sent out in the Scattering had not carried with them

the secret of the axlotl tanks? What then? Melange. The orange-eyed whores

obviously used an inadequate substitute. The people of the Scattering might not

have solved the mystery of the Tleilaxu tanks. They would know about axlotl

tanks and try to recreate them. But if they failed -- melange!

She began to explore this projection.

The Lost Ones ran out of the true melange their ancestors took into the

Scattering. What sources did they have then? The worms of Rakis and the

original Bene Tleilax. The whores would not dare reveal their true interest.

Their ancestors believed that the worms could not be transplanted. Was it

possible the Lost Ones had found a suitable planet for the worms? Of course it

was possible. They might begin bargaining with the Tleilaxu as a diversion.

Rakis would be their real target. Or the reverse could be true.

Transportable wealth.

She had seen Teg's reports on the wealth being accumulated on Gammu. Some among

the ones returning had coinages and other negotiable chips. That much was plain

from the banking activities.

What greater currency was there, though, than the spice?

Wealth. That was it, of course. And whatever the chips, the bargaining had

begun.

Taraza grew aware of voices outside her door. The acolyte Sleep-Guard was

arguing with someone. The voices were low but Taraza heard enough to bring her

into full alert.

"She left a wake-up for late morning," the Sleep-Guard protested.

Someone else whispered: "She said she was to be told the moment I returned."

"I tell you she is very tired. She needs --"

"She needs to be obeyed! Tell her I'm back!"

Taraza sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. Her feet found the

floor. Gods! How her knees ached. It pained her, too, that she could not

place the intruding whisper, the person arguing with her guard.

Whose return did I . . . Burzmali!

"I'm awake," Taraza called.

Her door opened and the Sleep-Guard leaned in. "Mother Superior, Burzmali has

returned from Gammu."

"Send him in at once!" Taraza activated a single glowglobe at the head of her

cot. Its yellow light washed away the room's darkness.

Burzmali entered and closed the door behind him. Without being told. he

touched the sound-insulation switch on the door and all outside noises vanished.

Privacy? It was bad news then.

She looked up at Burzmali. He was a short, slender fellow with a sharply

triangular face narrowing to a thin chin. Blond hair swept over a high

forehead. His widely spaced green eyes were alert and watchful. He looked far

too young for the responsibilities of a Bashar, but then Teg had looked even

younger at Arbelough. We are getting old, damn it. She forced herself to relax

and place her trust in the fact that Teg had trained this man and expressed full

confidence in him.

"Tell me the bad news," Taraza said.

Burzmali cleared his throat. "Still no sign of the Bashar and his party on

Gammu, Mother Superior." He had a heavy, masculine voice.

And that's not the worst of it, Taraza thought. She saw the clear signs of

Burzmali's nervousness.

"Let's have it all," she ordered. "Obviously, you have completed your

examination of the Keep's ruins."

"No survivors," he said. "The attackers were thorough."

"Tleilaxu?"

"Possible."

"You have doubts?"

"The attackers used that new Ixian explosive, 12-Uri. I . . . I think it may

have been used to mislead us. There were mechanical brain-probe holes in

Schwangyu's skull, too."

"What of Patrin?"

"Exactly as Schwangyu reported. He blew himself up in that decoy ship. They

identified him from bits of two fingers and one intact eye. There was nothing

left big enough to probe."

"But you have doubts! Get to them!"

"Schwangyu left a message that only we might read."

"In the wear marks on furniture?"

"Yes, Mother Superior, and --"

"Then she knew she would be attacked and had time to leave a message. I saw

your earlier report on the devastation of the attack."

"It was quick and totally overpowering. The attackers did not try to take

captives."

"What did she say?"

"Whores."

Taraza tried to contain her shock, although she had been expecting that word.

The effort to remain calm almost drained her energies. This was very bad.

Taraza permitted herself a deep sigh. Schwangyu's opposition had persisted to

the end. But then, seeing disaster, she had made a proper decision. Knowing

she would die without the opportunity to transfer her Memory Lives to another

Reverend Mother, she had acted from the most basic loyalty. If you can do

nothing else, arm your Sisters and frustrate the enemy.

So the Honored Matres have acted!

"Tell me about your search for the ghola," Taraza ordered.

"We were not the first searchers over that ground, Mother Superior. There was

much additional burning of trees and rocks and underbrush."

"But it was a no-ship?"

"The marks of a no-ship."

Taraza nodded to herself. A silent message from Old Reliability?

"How closely did you examine the area?"

"I flew over it but on a routine trip from one place to another."

Taraza motioned Burzmali to a chair near the foot of her cot. "Sit down and

relax. I want you to do some guessing for me."

Burzmali lowered himself carefully onto the chair. "Guessing?"

"You were his favorite student. I want you to imagine that you are Miles Teg.

You know you must get the ghola out of the Keep. You do not place your full

trust in anyone around you, not even in Lucilla. What will you do?"

"An unexpected thing, of course."

"Of course."

Burzmali rubbed his narrow chin. Presently, he said: "I trust Patrin. I trust

him fully."

"All right, you and Patrin. What do you do?"

"Patrin is a native of Gammu."

"I have been wondering about that myself," she said.

Burzmali looked at the floor in front of him. "Patrin and I will make an

emergency plan long before it is needed. I always prepare secondary ways of

dealing with problems."

"Very good. Now -- the plan. What do you do?"

"Why did Patrin kill himself?" Burzmali asked.

"You're sure that's what he did."

"You saw the reports. Schwangyu and several others were sure of it. I accept

it. Patrin was loyal enough to do that for his Bashar."

"For you! You are Miles Teg now. What plan have you and Patrin concocted?"

"I would not deliberately send Patrin to certain death."

"Unless?"

"Patrin did that on his own. He might if the plan originated with him and not

with . . . me. He might do it to protect me, to make sure no one discovered the

plan."

"How could Patrin summon a no-ship without our learning of it?"

"Patrin was a Gammu native. His family goes back to the Giedi Prime days."

Taraza closed her eyes and turned her head away from Burzmali. So Burzmali

followed the same suggestive tracks that she had been probing in her mind. We

knew Patrin's origins. What was the significance of that Gammu association?

Her mind refused to speculate. This was what came of allowing herself to become

too tired! She looked once more at Burzmali.

"Did Patrin find a way to make secret contact with family and old friends?"

"We've explored every contact we could find."

"Depend on it; you haven't traced them all."

Burzmali shrugged. "Of course not. I have not acted on that assumption."

Taraza took a deep breath. "Go back to Gammu. Take with you as much help as

our Security can spare. Tell Bellonda those are my orders. You must insinuate

agents into every walk of life. Find out who Patrin knew. What of his

surviving family? Friends? Winkle them out."

"That will cause a stir no matter how careful we are. Others will know."

"That cannot be helped. And Burzmali!"

He was on his feet. "Yes, Mother Superior?"

"The other searchers: You must stay ahead of them."

"May I use a Guild navigator?"

"No!"

"Then how --"

"Burzmali, what if Miles and Lucilla and our ghola are still on Gammu?"

"I've already told you that I do not accept the idea of their leaving in a noship!"

For a long silent period, Taraza studied the man standing at the foot of her

cot. Trained by Miles Teg. The old Bashar's favorite student. What was

Burzmali's trained instinct suggesting.

In a low voice, she prompted: "Yes?"

"Gammu was Giedi Prime, a Harkonnen place."

"What does that suggest to you?"

"They were rich, Mother Superior. Very rich."

"So?"

"Rich enough to accomplish the secret installation of a no-room . . . even of

a large no-globe."

"There are no records! Ix has never even vaguely suggested such a thing. They

have not probed on Gammu for . . ."

"Bribes, third-party purchases, many transshipments," Burzmali said. "The

Famine Times were very disruptive and before that there were all those millennia

of the Tyrant."

"When the Harkonnens kept their heads down or lost them. Still, I will admit

the possibility."

"Records could have been lost," Burzmali said.

"Not by us or the other governments that survived. What prompts this line of

speculation?"

"Patrin."

"Ahhhhh."

He spoke quickly: "If such a thing were discovered, a Gammu native might know

about it."

"How many of them would know? Do you think they could have kept such a secret

for . . . Yes! I see what you mean. If it were a secret of Patrin's family .

. .

"I have not dared question any of them about it."

"Of course not! But where would you look . . . without alerting . . .

"That place on the mountain where the no-ship marks were left."

"It would require you to go there in person!"

"Very hard to conceal from spies," he agreed. "Unless I went with a very small

force and seemingly on another purpose."

"What other purpose?"

"To place a funeral marker in memory of my old Bashar."

"Suggesting that we know he is dead? Yes!"

"You've already asked the Tleilaxu to replace our ghola."

"That was a simple precaution and does not bear on . . . Burzmali, this is

extremely dangerous. I doubt we can mislead the kinds of people who will

observe you on Gammu."

"The mourning of myself and the people I take with me will be dramatic and

believable."

"The believable does not necessarily convince a wary observer."

"Do you not trust my loyalty and the loyalty of the people I will take with me?"

Taraza pursed her lips in thought. She reminded herself that fixed loyalty was

a thing they had learned to improve upon from the Atreides pattern. How to

produce people who command the utmost devotion. Burzmali and Teg both were fine

examples.

"It might work," Taraza agreed. She stared speculatively at Burzmali. Teg's

favorite student could be right!

"Then I'll go," Burzmali said. He turned to leave.

"One moment," Taraza said.

Burzmali turned. "You will saturate yourselves with shere, all of you. And if

you're captured by Face Dancers -- these new ones! -- you must burn your own

heads or shatter them completely. Take the necessary precautions."

The suddenly sobered expression on Burzmali's face reassured Taraza. He had

been proud of himself for a moment there. Better to dampen his pride. No need

for him to be reckless.

We have long known that the objects of our palpable sense experiences can be

influenced by choice -- both conscious choice and unconscious. This is a

demonstrated fact that does not require that we believe some force within us

reaches out and touches the universe. I address a pragmatic relationship

between belief and what we identify as "real." All of our judgments carry a

heavy burden of ancestral beliefs to which we of the Bene Gesserit tend to be

more susceptible than most. It is not enough that we are aware of this and

guard against it. Alternative interpretations must always receive our

attention.

-Mother Superior Taraza: Argument in Council

"God will judge us here," Waff gloated.

He had been doing that at unpredictable moments all during this long ride across

the desert. Sheeana appeared not to notice but Waff's voice and comments had

begun to wear on Odrade. The Rakian sun had moved far down to the west but the

worm that carried them appeared untiring in its drive across the ancient Sareer

toward the remnant mounds of the Tyrant's barrier wall.

Why this direction? Odrade wondered.

No answer satisfied. The fanaticism and renewed danger from Waff, though,

demanded immediate response. She called up the cant of the Shariat that she

knew drove him.

"Let God do the judging and not men."

Waff scowled at the taunting note in her voice. He looked at the horizon ahead

and then up at the 'thopters, which kept pace with them.

"Men must do God's work," he muttered.

Odrade did not answer. Waff had been deflected into his doubts and now would be

asking himself: Did these Bene Gesserit witches really share the Great Belief?

Her thoughts dove back into the unanswered questions, tumbling through all she

knew about the worms of Rakis. Personal memories and Other Memories wove a mad

montage. She could visualize robed Fremen atop a worm even larger than this

one, each rider leaning back against a long hooked pole that dug into a worm's

rings as her hands now gripped this one. She felt the wind against her cheeks,

the robe whipping against her shanks. This ride and others merged into a long

familiarity.

It has been a long time since an Atreides rode this way.

Was there a clue to their destination back in Dar-es-Balat? How could there be?

But it had been so hot and her mind had been questing forward to what might

happen on this venture into the desert. She had not been as alert as she might

have been.

In common with every other community on Rakis, Dar-es-Balat pulled inward from

its edges during the heat of the early afternoon. Odrade recalled the chafing

of her new stillsuit while she waited in a building's shadows near the western

limits of Dar-es-Balat. She waited for the separate escorts to bring Sheeana

and Waff from the safe houses where Odrade had installed them.

What a tempting target she had made. But they had to be certain of Rakian

compliance. The Bene Gesserit escorts delayed deliberately.

"Shaitan likes the heat," Sheeana had said.

Rakians hid from the heat but the worms came out then. Was that a significant

fact, revealing the reason for this worm to take them in a particular direction?

My mind is bouncing around like a child's ball!

What did it signify that Rakians hid from the sun while a little Tleilaxu, a

Reverend Mother, and a wild young girl went coursing across the desert atop a

worm? It was an ancient pattern on Rakis. Nothing surprising about it at all.

The ancient Fremen had been mostly nocturnal, though. Their modern descendants

depended more on shade to protect them from the hottest sunlight.

How safe the priests felt behind their guardian moats!

Every resident of a Rakian urban center knew the qanat was out there, water

running slick in shadowed darkness, trickles diverted to feed the narrow canals

whose evaporation was recaptured in the windtraps.

"Our prayers protect us," they said, but they knew very well what really

protected them.

"His holy presence is seen in the desert."

The Holy Worm.

The Divided God.

Odrade looked down at the worm rings in front of her. And here he is!

She thought of the priests among the watchers in the 'thopters overhead. How

they loved to spy on others! She had felt them watching her back in Dar-es-

Balat while she awaited the arrival of Sheeana and Waff. Eyes behind the high

grills of hidden balconies. Eyes peering through slits in thick walls. Eyes

concealed behind mirror-plaz or staring out from shadowed places.

Odrade had forced herself to ignore the dangers while she marked the passage of

time by the movement of the shadow line on a wall above her: a sure clock in

this land where few kept other than suntime.

Tensions had built, amplified by the need to appear unconcerned. Would they

attack? Would they dare, knowing that she had taken her own precautions? How

angry were the priests at being forced to join the Tleilaxu in this secret

triumvirate? Her Reverend Mother advisors from the Keep had not liked this

dangerous baiting of the priests.

"Let one of us be the bait!"

Odrade had been adamant: "They would not believe it. Suspicions would keep

them away. Besides, they are sure to send Albertus."

So Odrade had waited in the Dar-es-Balat courtyard, green-shadowed in the depths

where she stood looking upward at the sunline six stories overhead -- past lacy

balustrades at each balconied level: green plants, brilliant red, orange, and

blue flowers, a rectangle of silvery sky above the tiers.

And the hidden eyes.

Motion at the wide street door to her right! A single figure in priestly gold,

purple, and white let himself into the courtyard. She studied him, looking for

signs that the Tleilaxu might have extended their sway by another Face Dancer

mimic. But this was a man, a priest she recognized: Albertus, the senior of

Dar-es-Balat.

Just as we expected.

Albertus moved through the wide atrium and across the courtyard toward her,

walking with careful dignity. Were there dangerous portents in him? Would he

signal his assassins? She glanced upward at the tiered balconies: little

flickering motions at the higher levels. The approaching priest was not alone.

But neither am I!

Albertus came to a stop two paces from Odrade and looked up at her from where he

had kept his attention -- on the intricate gold and purple designs of the

courtyard's tiled floor.

He has weak bones, Odrade thought.

She gave no sign of recognition. Albertus was one of those who knew that his

High Priest had been replaced by a Face Dancer mimic.

Albertus cleared his throat and took a trembling breath.

Weak bones! Weak flesh!

While the thought amused Odrade, it did not reduce her wariness. Reverend

Mothers always noted that sort of thing. You looked for the marks of the

breeding. Such selectivity as existed in the ancestry of Albertus carried

flaws, elementals that the Sisterhood would try to correct in his descendants if

it ever appeared worthwhile to breed him. This would be considered, of course.

Albertus had risen to a position of power, doing it quietly but definitely, and

it must be determined whether that implied valuable genetic material. Albertus

had been poorly educated, though. A first-year acolyte could have handled him.

Conditioning among the Rakian priesthood had degenerated badly since the old

Fish Speaker days.

"Why are you here?" Odrade demanded, making it as much an accusation as a

question.

Albertus trembled. "I bring a message from your people, Reverend Mother."

"Then say it!"

"There has been a slight delay, something about the route here being known by

too many."

That, at least, was the story they had agreed to tell the priests. But the

other things on the face of Albertus were easy to read. Secrets shared with him

were dangerously close to exposure.

"I almost wish I had ordered you killed," Odrade said.

Albertus recoiled two full paces. His eyes went vacant, as though he had died

right there in front of her. She recognized the reaction. Albertus had entered

that fully revelatory phase where fear gripped his scrotum. He knew that this

terrible Reverend Mother Odrade might pass a death sentence upon him quite

casually or kill him with her own hands. Nothing he said or did would escape

her awful scrutiny.

"You have been considering whether to kill me and destroy our Keep at Keen,"

Odrade accused.

Albertus trembled violently. "Why do you say such things, Reverend Mother?"

There was a revealing whine in his voice.

"Don't try to deny it," she said. "I wonder how many have found you as easy to

read as I do? You are supposed to be a keeper of secrets. You are not supposed

to be walking around with all of our secrets written on your face!"

Albertus fell to his knees. She thought he would grovel.

"But your own people sent me!"

"And you were only too happy to come and decide whether it might be possible to

kill me."

"Why would we --"

"Silence! You do not like it that we control Sheeana. You are fearful of the

Tleilaxu. Matters have been taken from your priestly hands and things have been

set in motion that terrify you."

"Reverend Mother! What are we to do? What are we to do?"

"You will obey us! More than that, you will obey Sheeana! You fear what we

venture this day? You have greater things to fear!"

She shook her head in mock dismay, knowing the effect all of this was having on

poor Albertus. He cringed beneath the weight of her anger.

"On your feet!" she ordered. "And remember that you are a priest and the truth

is demanded of you!"

Albertus stumbled to his feet and kept his head bowed. She could see his body

responding to the decision that he abandon subterfuge. What a trial that must

be for him! Dutiful to the Reverend Mother who so obviously read his heart, now

he must be dutiful to his religion. He must confront the ultimate paradox of

all religions:

God knows!

"You hide nothing from me, nothing from Sheeana, and nothing from God," Odrade

said.

"Forgive me, Reverend Mother."

"Forgive you? It is not in my power to forgive you nor should you ask it of me.

You are a priest!"

He lifted his gaze to Odrade's angry face.

The paradox was upon him completely now. God was surely here! But God was

usually a long way away and confrontations could be put off. Tomorrow was

another day of life. Surely it was. And it was acceptable if you permitted

yourself a few small sins, perhaps a lie or two. For the time being only. And

maybe a big sin if temptations were great. Gods were supposed to be more

understanding of great sinners. There would be time to make amends.

Odrade stared at Albertus with the analyzing eye of the Missionaria Protectiva.

Ahhh, Albertus, she thought. But now you stand in the presence of a fellow

human who knows all of the things you believed were secrets between you and your

god.

For Albertus, his present situation could be little different from death and

that ultimate submission to the final judgment of his god. That surely

described the unconscious setting for the way Albertus let his will power

crumble now. All of his religious fears had been called up and were focused on

a Reverend Mother.

In her driest tones, not even compelling him with Voice, Odrade said: "I want

this farce ended immediately."

Albertus tried to swallow. He knew he could not lie. He might know a remote

capability of lying but that was useless. Submissively, he looked up at

Odrade's forehead where the line of her stillsuit cap had been drawn tightly

across her brow. He spoke in little more than a whisper:

"Reverend Mother, it is only that we feel deprived. You and the Tleilaxu go

into the desert with our Sheeana. Both of you will learn from her and . . ."

His shoulders sagged. "Why do you take the Tleilaxu?"

"Sheeana wishes it," Odrade lied.

Albertus opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. She could see

acceptance flood through him.

"You will return to your fellows with my warning," Odrade said. "The survival

of Rakis and of your priesthood depend utterly on how well you obey me. You

will not hinder us in the slightest! And as to these puerile plots against us -

- Sheeana reveals to us your every evil thought!"

Albertus surprised her then. He shook his head and emitted a dry chuckle.

Odrade already had noted that many of these priests enjoyed discomfiture but had

not suspected that they might find amusement in their own failures.

"I find your laughter shallow," she said.

Albertus shrugged and restored some of his facial mask. Odrade had seen several

such masks on him. Facades! He wore them in layers. And far down under all of

that defensiveness lay the someone who cared, the one she had exposed here so

briefly. These priests had a dangerous way of falling into florid explanations,

though, when taxed too heavily with questions.

I must restore the one who cares, Odrade thought. She cut him off as he started

to speak.

"No more! You will wait upon me when I return from the desert. For now, you

are my messenger. Carry my message accurately and you will win a greater reward

than you have ever imagined. Fail and you will suffer the agonies of Shaitan!"

Odrade watched Albertus scurry out of the courtyard, shoulders hunched, his head

thrust forward as though he could not get his mouth within speaking distance of

his peers soon enough.

On the whole, she thought, it had gone well. A calculated risk and very

dangerous to her personally. She was sure there had been assassins on the

balconies above her waiting for a signal from Albertus. And now, the fear he

carried back with him was a thing the Bene Gesserit understood intimately

through millennia of manipulations. As contagiously virulent as any plague.

The teaching Sisters called it "a directed hysteria." It had been directed

(aimed was more accurate) at the heart of the Rakian priesthood. It could be

relied upon, especially with the reinforcement that now would be set in motion.

The priests would submit. Only the few immune heretics were to be feared now.

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and

motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding.

You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be

heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate

void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You

have only one awareness here -- the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you

learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes

and systems, an organizer of chaos.

-The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives

"What you are doing is too dangerous," Teg said. "My orders are to protect you

and strengthen you. I cannot permit this to continue."

Teg and Duncan stood in the long, wood-paneled hallway just outside the noglobe's

practice floor. It was late afternoon by the clock of their arbitrary

routine and Lucilla had just swept away in anger after a vituperative

confrontation.

Every meeting between Duncan and Lucilla lately had taken on the nature of a

battle. Just now, she had stood in the doorway to the practice hall, a solid

figure saved from being stolid by her softening curves, the seductive movements

obvious to both males.

"Stop it, Lucilla!" Duncan had ordered.

Only her voice betrayed her anger: "How long do you think I will wait to carry

out my orders?"

"Until you or someone else tells me that I --"

"Taraza requires things of you that none of us here knows!" Lucilla said.

Teg tried to soothe the mounting angers: "Please. Isn't it enough that Duncan

continues to improve his performance? In a few days, I will start keeping

regular watch outside. We can --"

"You can stop interfering with me, damn you!" Lucilla snapped. She whirled and

stalked away.

As he saw the hard resolution on Duncan's face now, something furious began to

work in Teg. He felt impelled by the necessities of their isolated situation.

His intellect, that marvelously honed Mentat instrument, was shielded here from

the mental uproar to which it adjusted on the outside. He thought that if he

could only silence his mind, bring everything to stillness, all things would

become clear to him.

"Why are you holding your breath, Bashar?"

Duncan's voice impaled Teg. It required a supreme act of will to resume normal

breathing. He felt the emotions of his two companions in the no-globe as an ebb

and flow temporarily removed from other forces.

Other forces.

Mentat awareness could be an idiot in the presence of other forces that swept

through the universe. There might exist in the universe people whose lives were

infused with powers he could not imagine. Before such forces he would be chaff

moved on the froth of wild currents.

Who could plunge into such an uproar and emerge intact?

"What can Lucilla possibly do if I continue to resist her?" Duncan asked.

"Has she used Voice on you?" Teg asked. His own voice sounded remote to him.

"Once."

"You resisted?" Remote surprise lurked somewhere within Teg.

"I learned the way of that from Paul Muad'dib himself."

"She is capable of paralyzing you and --"

"I think her orders prohibit violence."

"What is violence, Duncan?"

"I'm going to the showers, Bashar. Are you coming?"

"In a few minutes." Teg took a deep breath, sensing how close he was to

exhaustion. This afternoon on the practice floor and afterward had drained him.

He watched Duncan leave. Where was Lucilla? What was she planning? How long

could she wait? That was the central question and it put the no-globe's

peculiar emphasis on their isolation from Time.

Again, he sensed that ebb and flow which their three lives influenced. I must

talk to Lucilla! Where has she gone? The library? No! There is something

else I must do first.

Lucilla sat in the room she had chosen for her personal quarters. It was a

small space with an ornate bed filling an inset into one wall. Gross and subtle

signs around her said this had been the room of a favorite Harkonnen hetaira.

Pastel blues with darker blue accents shaded the fabrics. Despite the baroque

carvings on bed, alcove, ceiling, and every functioning appurtenance, the room

itself could be swept out of her consciousness once she relaxed here. She lay

back on the bed and closed her eyes against the sexually gross figures on the

alcove ceiling.

Teg will have to be dealt with.

It would have to be done in such a way that it did not offend Taraza or weaken

the ghola. Teg presented a special problem in many ways, especially in the way

his mental processes could dip into and out of deeper sources akin to those of

the Bene Gesserit.

The Reverend Mother who bore him, of course!

Something passed from such a mother to such a child. It began in the womb and

probably did not end even when they were finally separated. He had never

undergone the all-ravening transmutation that produced Abominations . . . no,

not that. But he had subtle and real powers. Those born of Reverend Mothers

learned things impossible to others.

Teg knew precisely how Lucilla viewed love in all of its manifestations. She

had seen it on his face that once in his quarters at the Keep.

"Calculating witch!"

He might as well have spoken it aloud.

She recalled the way she had favored him with her benign smile and dominating

expression. That had been a mistake, demeaning to both of them. She sensed in

such thoughts a latent sympathy for Teg. Somewhere within her, despite all of

the careful Bene Gesserit training, there were chinks in her armor. Her

teachers had warned her about that many times.

"To be capable of inducing real love, you must feel it, but only temporarily.

And once is enough!"

Teg's reactions to the Duncan Idaho ghola said much. Teg was both drawn to and

repelled by their young charge.

As I am.

Perhaps it had been a mistake not to seduce Teg.

In her sex education, where she had been taught to gain strength from

intercourse rather than lose herself in it, her teachers had emphasized analysis

and historical comparisons, of which there were many in a Reverend Mother's

Other Memories.

Lucilla focused her thoughts on Teg's male presence. Doing this, she could feel

a female response, her flesh wanting Teg close to her and aroused to sexual peak

-- ready for the moment of mystery.

Faint amusement crept into Lucilla's awareness. Not orgasm. No scientific

labels! It was purest Bene Gesserit cant: moment of mystery, the Imprinter's

ultimate specialty. Immersion in the long Bene Gesserit continuity required

this concept. She had been taught to believe deeply in a duality: the

scientific knowledge by which the Breeding Mistresses guided them but, at the

same time, the moment of mystery that confounded all knowledge. Bene Gesserit

history and science said the procreative drive must remain irretrievably buried

in the psyche. It could not be removed without destroying the species.

The safety net.

Lucilla gathered her sexual forces around her now as only a Bene Gesserit

Imprinter could. She began to focus her thoughts on Duncan. By now, he would

be in the showers and thinking about this evening's training session with his

Reverend Mother-teacher.

I will go to my student presently, she thought. The important lesson must be

taught or he will not be fully prepared for Rakis.

Those were Taraza's instructions.

Lucilla swung the focus of her thoughts fully onto Duncan. It was almost as

though she saw him standing naked under the shower.

How little he understood of what there might be to learn!

Duncan sat alone in the dressing cubicle off the showers which adjoined the

practice hall. He was immersed in a deep sadness. This brought remembered

pains to old wounds that this young flesh had never experienced.

Some things never changed! The Sisterhood was at its old-old games again.

He looked up and around this dark-paneled Harkonnen place. Arabesques were

carved into walls and ceiling, strange designs in the tesserae of the floor.

Monsters and lovely human bodies intermingled across the same defining lines.

Only a flicker of attention separated one from the other.

Duncan looked down at this body that the Tleilaxu and their axlotl tanks had

produced for him. It still felt strange at moments. He had been a man of many

adult experiences in the last instant he remembered from his pre-ghola life --

fighting off a swarm of Sardaukar warriors, giving his young Duke a chance to

escape.

His Duke! Paul had been no older than this flesh then. Conditioned, though,

the way the Atreides always were: Loyalty and honor above all else.

The way they conditioned me after they saved me from the Harkonnens.

Something within him could not evade that ancient debt. He knew its source. He

could outline the process by which it had been embedded in him.

There it remained.

Duncan glanced at the tiled floor. Words had been worked in the tile along the

cubicle's splashboard. It was a script that one part of him identified as an

ancient thing from the old Harkonnen times but that another part of him found to

be an all-too-familiar Galach.

"CLEAN SWEET CLEAN BRIGHT CLEAN PURE CLEAN"

The ancient script repeated itself around the room's perimeter as though the

words themselves might create something that Duncan knew was alien to the

Harkonnens of his memories.

Over the door to the showers, more script:

"CONFESS THY HEART AND FIND PURITY"

A religious admonition in a Harkonnen stronghold? Had the Harkonnens changed in

the centuries after his death? Duncan found this hard to believe. These words

were things that the builders probably had thought appropriate.

He felt rather than heard Lucilla enter the room behind him. Duncan stood and

fastened the clips of the tunic he had appropriated from the nullentropy bins

(but only after removing all Harkonnen insignia!).

Without turning, he said: "What now, Lucilla?"

She stroked the fabric of the tunic along his left arm. "The Harkonnens had

rich tastes."

Duncan spoke quietly: "Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I

will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill

me."

She recoiled.

He stared into her eyes. "I am not some damned stud for the witches!"

"Is that what you think we want of you?"

"Nobody has said what you want of me but your actions are obvious!"

He stood poised on the balls of his feet. The unawakened thing within him

stirred and sent his pulse racing.

Lucilla studied him carefully. Damn that Miles Teg! She had not expected

resistance to take this form. There was no doubting Duncan's sincerity. Words

by themselves no longer would serve. He was immune to Voice.

Truth.

It was the only weapon left to her.

"Duncan, I do not know precisely what it is Taraza expects you to do on Rakis.

I can guess but my guess may be wrong."

"Guess, then."

"There is a young girl on Rakis, barely into her teens. Her name is Sheeana.

The worms of Rakis obey her. Somehow, the Sisterhood must gather this talent

into its own store of abilities."

"What could I possibly. . .

"If I knew, I certainly would tell you now."

He heard her sincerity unmasked by her desperation.

"What does your talent have to do with this?" he demanded.

"Only Taraza and her councillors know."

"They want some hold on me, something from which I cannot escape!"

Lucilla already had arrived at this deduction but she had not expected him to

see it that quickly. Duncan's youthful face concealed a mind that worked in

ways she had not yet fathomed. Lucilla's thoughts raced.

"Control the worms and you could revive the old religion." It was Teg's voice

from the doorway behind Lucilla.

I did not hear him arrive!

She whirled. Teg stood there with one of the antique Harkonnen lasguns held

casually across his left arm, its muzzle directed at her.

"This is to insure that you listen to me," he said.

"How long have you been there listening?"

Her angry glare did not change his expression.

"From the moment you admitted you don't know what Taraza expects of Duncan," Teg

said. "Nor do I. But I can make a few Mentat projections -- nothing firm yet

but all of them suggestive. Tell me if I am wrong."

"About what?"

He glanced at Duncan. "One of the things you were told to do was to make him

irresistible to most women."

Lucilla tried to conceal her dismay. Taraza had warned her to conceal this from

Teg as long as possible. She saw that concealment no longer was possible. Teg

had read her reaction with those damnable abilities imparted to him by his

damnable mother!

"A great deal of energy is being gathered and aimed at Rakis," Teg said. He

looked steadily at Duncan. "No matter what the Tleilaxu have buried in him, he

has the stamp of ancient humankind in his genes. Is that what the Breeding

Mistresses need?"

"A damned Bene Gesserit stud!" Duncan said.

"What do you intend to do with that weapon?" Lucilla asked. She nodded at the

antique lasgun in Teg's hands.

"This? I didn't even put a charge cartridge in it." He lowered the lasgun and

leaned it into a corner beside him.

"Miles Teg, you will be punished!" Lucilla grated.

"That will have to wait," he said. "It's almost night outside. I've been out

there under the life-shield. Burzmali has been here. He has left his sign to

tell me he read the message I scratched with those animal marks on the trees."

A glittering alertness came into Duncan's eyes.

"What will you do?" Lucilla asked.

"I have left new marks arranging a rendezvous. Right now, we are all going up

to the library. We are going to study the maps. We will commit them to memory.

At the very least, we should know where we are when we run."

She gave him the benefit of a curt nod.

Duncan noted her movement with only part of his awareness. His mind already had

leaped ahead to the ancient equipment in the Harkonnen library. He had been the

one to show both Lucilla and Teg how to use it correctly, calling up an ancient

map of Giedi Prime dating from the time when the no-globe had been built.

With Duncan's pre-ghola memory as guide and his own more modern knowledge of the

planet, Teg had tried to bring the map up to date.

"Forest Guard Station" became "Bene Gesserit Keep."

"Part of it was a Harkonnen hunting lodge," Duncan had said. "They hunted human

game raised and conditioned specifically for that purpose."

Towns vanished under Teg's updating. Some cities remained but received new

labels. "Ysai," the nearest metropolis, had been marked "Barony" on the

original map.

Duncan's eyes went hard in memory. "That's where they tortured me."

When Teg exhausted his memory of the planet, much was marked unknown but there

were frequent curly-ended Bene Gesserit symbols to identify the places where

Taraza's people had told Teg he might find temporary sanctuary.

Those were the places Teg wanted committed to memory.

As he turned to lead them up to the library, Teg said: "I will erase the map

when we have learned it. There's no telling who might find this place and study

it."

Lucilla swept past him. "It's on your head, Miles!" she said.

Teg called after her retreating back: "A Mentat tells you that I did what was

required of me."

She spoke without turning: "How logical!"

This room reconstructs a bit of the desert of Dune. The sandcrawler directly in

front of you dates from the Atreides times. Grouped around it, moving clockwise

from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice factory and

the other support equipment. All are explained at each station. Note the

illuminated quotation above the display: "FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE ABUNDANCE

OF THE SEAS AND OF THE TREASURE IN THE SAND." This ancient religious quotation

was oft repeated by the famous Gurney Halleck.

-Guide Announcement, Museum of Dar-es-Balat

The worm did not slow its relentless progress until just before dusk.. By then,

Odrade had played out her questions and still had no answers. How did Sheeana

control the worms? Sheeana said she was not steering her Shaitan in this

direction. What was this hidden language to which the desert monster responded?

Odrade knew that her Sister-guardians up there in the 'thopters that paced them

would be exhausting the same questions plus one more.

Why did Odrade let this ride continue?

They might even hazard a few guesses: She does not call us in because that

might disturb the beast. She does not trust us to pluck her party from its

back.

The truth was far simpler: curiosity.

The hissing passage of the worm could have been a surging vessel breasting seas.

The dry flinty odors of overheated sand, swept across them by a following wind,

said otherwise. Only open desert stretched around them now, kilometer after

kilometer of whaleback dunes as regular in their spacing as ocean waves.

Waff had been silent for a long period. He crouched in a miniature reproduction

of Odrade's position, his attention directed ahead, a blank expression on his

face. His most recent statement:

"God guard the faithful in the hour of our trial!"

Odrade thought of him as living proof that a strong enough fanaticism could

endure for ages. Zensunni and the old Sufi survived in the Tleilaxu. It was

like a deadly microbe that had lain dormant all of those millennia, waiting for

the right host to feed its virulence.

What will happen to the thing I planted in the Rakian priesthood? she wondered.

Saint Sheeana was a certainty.

Sheeana sat on a ring of her Shaitan, her robe pulled up to expose her thin

shanks. She gripped the ring with both hands between her legs.

She had said that her first worm ride went directly to the city of Keen. Why

there? Had the worm simply been taking her to her own kind?

This one beneath them now certainly had a different goal. Sheeana no longer

questioned but then Odrade had ordered her to remain silent and practice the low

trance. That, at least, would assure that every last detail of this experience

could be recalled easily from her memory. If there were a hidden language

between Sheeana and worm, they would find it later.

Odrade peered at the horizon. The remnant base of the ancient wall around the

Sareer was only a few kilometers ahead. Long shadows from it lay across the

dunes, telling Odrade that the remnant was higher than she had originally

suspected. It was a shattered and broken outline now, with great boulders

strewn along its base. The notch where the Tyrant had tumbled from his bridge

into the Idaho River lay well to their right, at least three kilometers off

their path. No river flowed there now.

Waff stirred beside her. "I heed Thy call, God," he said. "It is Waff of the

Entio who prays in Thy Holy Place."

Odrade swiveled her gaze toward him without moving her head. Entio? Her Other

Memories knew an Entio, a tribal leader in the great Zensunni Wandering, long

before Dune. What was this? What ancient memories did these Tleilaxu keep

alive?

Sheeana broke her silence. "Shaitan is slowing."

The remains of the ancient wall blocked their way. It loomed at least fifty

meters over the highest dunes. The worm turned slightly to the right and moved

between two giant boulders that towered above them. It came to a stop. The

long ridged back lay parallel to a mostly intact section of the wall's base.

Sheeana stood and looked at the barrier.

"What is this place?" Waff asked. He raised his voice above the sound of the

'thopters circling overhead.

Odrade released her tiring grip and flexed her fingers. She continued to kneel

while she studied their surroundings. Shadows from the tumbled boulders drew

hard lines on sand spills and smaller rocks. Seen close up, not twenty meters

away, the wall revealed cracks and fissures, dark openings into the ancient

foundation.

Waff stood and massaged his hands.

"Why have we been brought here?" he asked. His voice was faintly plaintive.

The worm twitched.

"Shaitan wants us to get off," Sheeana said.

How does she know? Odrade wondered. The worm's movement had not been enough to

make any of them stumble. It could have been some private reflex after the long

journey.

But Sheeana faced the ancient wall's foundation, sat down on the curve of the

worm and slid off. She dropped in a crouch on soft sand.

Odrade and Waff moved forward and watched with fascination as Sheeana slogged

through the sand to the front of the creature. There, Sheeana placed both hands

on her hips and faced the gaping mouth. Hidden flames played orange light

across the young face.

"Shaitan, why are we here?" Sheeana demanded.

Again, the worm twitched.

"He wants all of you off him," Sheeana called.

Waff looked at Odrade. "If God wishes thee to die, He causes thy steps to lead

thee to the place of thy death."

Odrade gave him back a paraphrase from the cant of the Shariat: "Obey God's

messenger in all things."

Waff sighed. Doubt was plain on his face. But he turned and was first off the

worm, dropping just ahead of Odrade. They followed Sheeana's example, moving to

the front of the creature. Odrade, every sense alert, fixed her gaze on

Sheeana.

It was much hotter in front of the gaping mouth. The familiar bite of melange

filled the air around them.

"We are here, God," Waff said.

Odrade, getting more than a little tired of his religious awe, spared a glance

for their surroundings -- the shattered rocks, the eroded barrier reaching into

the dusky sky, sand sloping against the time-scarred stones, and the slow

scorching huff-huff of the worm's internal fires.

But where is here? Odrade wondered. What is special about this place to make

it the worm's destination?

Four of the watching 'thopters passed in line overhead. The sound of their wing

fans and the hissing jets momentarily drowned out the worm's background

rumblings.

Shall I call them down? Odrade wondered. It would take only a hand signal.

Instead, she lifted two hands in the signal for the watchers to remain aloft.

Evening's chill was on the sand now. Odrade shivered and adjusted her

metabolism to the new demands. She felt confident that the worm would not

engulf them with Sheeana beside them.

Sheeana turned her back on the worm. "He wants us to be here," she said.

As though her words were a command, the worm twisted its head away from them and

slid off through the tall scattering of giant boulders. They could hear it

speeding away back into the desert.

Odrade faced the base of the ancient wall. Darkness would be upon them soon but

enough light remained in the high desert's long dusk that they might yet see

some explanation of why the creature had brought them here. A tall fissure in

the rock wall to her right seemed as good a place to investigate as any.

Keeping part of her attention on the sounds from Waff, Odrade climbed a sandy

incline toward the dark opening. Sheeana kept pace with her.

"Why are we here, Mother?"

Odrade shook her head. She heard Waff following.

The fissure directly in front of her was a shadowy hole into darkness. Odrade

stopped and held Sheeana beside her. She judged the opening to be about a meter

wide and some four times that in height. The rocky sides were curiously smooth,

as though polished by human hands. Sand had drifted into the opening. Light

from the setting sun reflected off the sand to bathe one side of the opening in

a wash of gold.

Waff spoke from behind them: "What is this place?"

"There are many old caves," Sheeana said. "Fremen hid their spice in caves."

She inhaled deeply through her nose. "Do you smell it, Mother?"

There was a definite melange odor to the place, Odrade agreed.

Waff moved past Odrade and into the fissure. He turned there, looking up at the

walls where they met in a sharp angle above him. Facing Odrade and Sheeana, he

backed farther into the opening, his attention on the walls. Odrade and Sheeana

stepped closer to him. With an abrupt hissing of spilled sand, Waff vanished

from their sight. In the same instant, the sand all around Odrade and Sheeana

slipped forward into the fissure, dragging both of them with it. Odrade grabbed

Sheeana's hand.

"Mother!" Sheeana cried.

The sound echoed from invisible rock walls as they slid down a long slope of

spilling sand into concealing darkness. The sand drifted them to a stop in a

final wash of gentle movement. Odrade, in sand up to her knees, extricated

herself and pulled Sheeana with her onto a hard surface.

Sheeana started to speak but Odrade said: "Hush! Listen!"

There was a grating disturbance off to the left.

"Waff?"

"I'm in it up to my waist." There was terror in his voice.

Odrade spoke dryly. "God must want it that way. Pull yourself out gently. It

feels like rock under our feet. Gently now! We don't need another avalanche."

As her eyes adjusted, Odrade looked up the sand slope down which they had

tumbled. The opening where they had entered this place was a distant slit of

dusky gold far away above them.

"Mother," Sheeana whispered. "I'm scared."

"Say the Litany Against Fear," Odrade ordered. "And be still. Our friends know

we are here. They will help us get out."

"God has brought us to this place," Waff said.

Odrade did not respond. In the silence, she pursed her lips and gave a highpitched

whistle, listening for the echoes. Her ears told her they were in a

large space with some sort of low obstruction behind them. She turned her back

on the narrow fissure and gave another whistle.

The low barrier lay about a hundred meters away.

Odrade freed her hand from Sheeana's. "Stay right here, please. Waff?"

"I hear the 'thopters," he said.

"We all hear them," Odrade said. "They are landing. We will have help

presently. Meanwhile, please stay where you are and remain silent. I need the

silence."

Whistling and listening for the echoes, placing each foot carefully, Odrade

worked her way deeper into the darkness. An outstretched hand encountered a

rough rock surface. She felt along it. Only about waist high. She could feel

nothing beyond it. The echoes of her whistles said it was a smaller space there

and partly enclosed.

A voice called from high behind her. "Reverend Mother! Are you there?"

Odrade turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Stay back!

We've been spilled into a deep cave. Bring a light and a long rope."

A tiny dark figure moved back out of the distant opening. The light up there

was growing dimmer. She lowered her cupped hands and spoke into the darkness.

"Sheeana? Waff? Come toward me about ten paces and wait there."

"Where are we, Mother?" Sheeana asked.

"Patience, child."

A low, muttering sound came from Waff. Odrade recognized the ancient words of

the Islamiyat. He was praying. Waff had dropped all attempts to conceal his

origins from her. Good. The believer was a receptacle for her to feed with the

sweets of the Missionaria Protectiva.

Meanwhile, the possibilities of this place where the worm had brought them

excited Odrade. Guided by one hand on the rock barrier, she explored along it

to her left. The top was quite smooth in places. All of it sloped inward away

from her. Other Memories offered a sudden projection:

Catchbasin!

This was a Fremen water storage basin. Odrade inhaled deeply, testing for

moisture. The air was flint dry.

A bright light from the fissure stabbed downward, driving away the darkness. A

voice called from the opening and Odrade recognized it as one of her Sisters.

"We can see you!"

Odrade stepped back from the low barrier and turned, peering all around. Waff

and Sheeana stood about sixty meters away staring at their surroundings. The

chamber was roughly circular, some two hundred meters in diameter. A rock dome

arched high overhead. She examined the low barrier beside her: yes, a Fremen

catchbasin. She could discern the small rock island in its center where a

captive worm could be kept ready to spill into the water. Other Memories

replayed that agonized, twisting death which produced the spice poison to ignite

a Fremen orgy.

A low arch framed more darkness on the far side of the basin. She could see the

spillway there where water had been brought down from a windtrap. There would

be more catchbasins back there, an entire complex of them designed to hold a

wealth of moisture for an ancient tribe. She knew the name of this place now.

"Sietch Tabr," Odrade whispered.

The words ignited a flood of useful memories. This had been Stilgar's place in

the time of Muad'dib. Why did that worm bring us to Sietch Tabr?

A worm took Sheeana to the City of Keen. That others might know of her? Then

what was there to know here? Were there people back there in that darkness?

Odrade sensed no indications of life in that direction.

Her Sister at the opening interrupted these thoughts. "We've had to ask for the

rope to be brought from Dar-es-Balat! The people at the museum say this is

probably Sietch Tabr! They thought it had been destroyed!"

"Send down a light so I can explore it," Odrade called.

"The priests ask that we leave it undisturbed!"

"Send me a light!" Odrade insisted.

Presently, a dark object tumbled down the sandslope in a small spill of sand.

Odrade sent Sheeana scampering for it. A touch on the switch and a bright beam

went lancing at the dark archway beyond the catchbasin. Yes, more basins there.

And beside this basin, a narrow stairway cut into the rock. The steps led

upward, turning and removing themselves from her view.

Odrade bent and whispered in Sheeana's ear. "Watch Waff carefully. If he moves

after us, call out."

"Yes, Mother. Where are we going?"

"I must look at this place. I am the one who has been brought here for a

purpose." She raised her voice and addressed Waff: "Waff, please wait there

for the rope."

"What have you been whispering?" he demanded. "Why must I wait? What are you

doing?"

"I have been praying," Odrade said. "Now, I must continue this pilgrimage

alone."

"Why alone?"

In the old language of the Islamiyat, she said: "It is written."

That stopped him!

Odrade led the way at a fast walk toward the rock stairs.

Sheeana, hurrying along beside Odrade, said: "We must tell people about this

place. The old Fremen caves are safe from Shaitan."

"Be still, child," Odrade said. She aimed the light up into the stairway. It

curved through the rock, angling sharply to the right up there. Odrade

hesitated. The warning sense of danger she had felt at the beginning of this

venture came back intensified. It was an almost palpable thing within her.

What is up there?

"Wait here, Sheeana," Odrade said. "Don't let Waff follow me."

"How can I stop him?" Sheeana glanced fearfully back across the chamber where

Waff stood.

"Tell him it is God's will that he remain. Say it this way . . .

Odrade bent close to Sheeana and repeated the words in Waff's ancient language,

then: "Say nothing else. Stand in his way and repeat it if he tries to pass."

Sheeana mouthed the new words quietly. She had them, Odrade saw. The girl was

quick.

"He's afraid of you," Odrade said. "He won't try to harm you."

"Yes, Mother." Sheeana turned, folded her arms across her breast and looked

across the chamber at Waff.

Aiming the light ahead of her, Odrade went up the rock stairs. Sietch Tabr!

What surprise have you left for us here, old worm?

In a long low hallway at the top of the stairs, Odrade came on the first desertmummified

bodies. There were five of them, two men and three women, no

identifying marks or clothing on them. They had been completely stripped and

left for the desert's dryness to preserve. Dehydration had pulled skin and

flesh tightly around the bones. The bodies were propped in a row, their feet

extended across the passage. Odrade was forced to step over each of these

macabre obstructions.

She passed her handlight across each body as she went. They had been stabbed

almost identically. A slashing blade had been thrust upward just below the arch

of the sternum.

Ritual killings?

Dryly puckered flesh had been withdrawn from the wounds, leaving a dark spot to

mark them. These bodies were not from Fremen times, Odrade knew. Fremen death

stills made ashes of all flesh to recover a body's water.

Odrade probed ahead with her light and paused to consider her position.

Discovery of the bodies intensified her sense of peril. I should have brought a

weapon. But that would have aroused Waff's suspicions.

The persistence of that inner warning could not be evaded. This relic of Sietch

Tabr was perilous.

The beam of her light revealed another stairway at the end of this hall.

Cautiously, Odrade moved forward. At the first step, she sent the beam of her

light probing upward. Shallow steps. Only a little way up, more rock -- a

wider space up there. Odrade turned and sent the light stabbing around this

hallway. Chips and burn marks scarred the rock walls. Once more, she looked up

the stairway.

What is up there?

The sense of danger was intense.

One slow step at a time, pausing often, Odrade climbed. She emerged into a

larger passage hewn through the native rock. More bodies greeted her. These

had been abandoned in the disarray of their final moments. Again, she saw only

mummified flesh stripped of clothing. They lay scattered along this wider

passage -- twenty of them. She wove her way around them. Some had been stabbed

in the same way as the five on the lower level. Some had been slashed and

hacked and burned by lasgun beams. One had been beheaded and the skin-masked

skull lay against a wall of the passage like a ball abandoned from some terrible

game.