shoulder toward Sheeana "-- will turn her back upon you and the words of the

Prophet will be dust in your mouths."

In the language of the Islamiyat, such words were too much for Waff. He lowered

his hand but he continued to glower at Taraza.

"My ambassador said we would share everything we know," Taraza said. "You said

you, too, would share. The messenger of God listens with the ears of the

Prophet! What pours forth from the Abdl of the Tleilaxu?"

Waff's shoulders sagged.

Taraza turned her back on him. It was an artful move but both she and the other

Reverend Mothers present knew she did it now in perfect safety. Looking across

the room at Odrade, Taraza allowed herself a smile that she knew Odrade would

interpret correctly. Time for a bit of Bene Gesserit punishment!

"The Tleilaxu desire an Atreides for breeding," Taraza said. "I give you Darwi

Odrade. More will be supplied."

Waff came to a decision. "You may know much about the Honored Matres," he said,

"but you --"

"Whores!" Taraza whirled on him.

"As you will. But there is a thing from them that your words reveal you do not

know. I seal our bargain by telling you this. They can magnify the sensations

of the orgasmic platform, transmitting this throughout a male body. They elicit

the total sensual involvement of the male. Multiple orgasmic waves are created

and may be continued by the . . . the female for an extended period."

"Total involvement?" Taraza did not try to hide her astonishment.

Odrade, too, listened with a sense of shock that she saw was shared by her

Sisters present, even the acolytes. Only Sheeana seemed not to understand.

"I tell you, Mother Superior Taraza," Waff said, a gloating smile on his face,

"that we have duplicated this with our own people. Myself even! In my anger, I

caused the Face Dancer who played the . . . female part to destroy itself. No

one . . . I say, no one! may have such a hold on me!"

"What hold?"

"If it had been one of these . . . these whores, as you call them, I would have

obeyed her without question in anything." He shuddered. "I barely had the will

to . . . to destroy . . ." He shook his head in bewilderment at the memory.

"Anger saved me."

Taraza tried to swallow in a dry throat. "How . . ."

"How is it done? Very well! But before I share this knowledge I warn you: If

one of you ever tries to use this power over one of us, bloody slaughter will

follow! We have prepared our Domel and all of our people to respond by killing

all Reverend Mothers they can find at the slightest sign that you seek this

power over us!"

"None of us would do that, but not because of your threat. We are restrained by

the knowledge that this would destroy us. Your bloody slaughter would not be

necessary."

"Oh? Then why does it not destroy these . . . these whores?"

"It does! And it destroys everyone they touch!"

"It has not destroyed me!"

"God protects you, my Abdl," Taraza said. "As He protects all of the faithful."

Convinced, Waff glanced around the room and back to Taraza. "Let all know that

I fulfill my bond in the land of the Prophet. This is the way of it, then . .

." He waved a hand to two of his Face Dancer guards. "We will demonstrate."

Much later, alone in the penthouse room, Odrade wondered if it had been wise to

let Sheeana see the whole performance. Well, why not? Sheeana already was

committed to the Sisterhood. And it would have aroused Waff's suspicions to

send Sheeana away.

There had been obvious sensual arousal in Sheeana as she watched the Face Dancer

performance. The Training Proctors would have to call in their male assistants

earlier than usual for Sheeana. What would Sheeana do then? Would she try this

new knowledge on the men? Inhibitions must be raised in Sheeana to prevent

that! She must be taught the dangers to herself.

The Sisters and acolytes present had controlled themselves well, storing what

they learned firmly in memory. Sheeana's education must be built on that

observation. Others mastered such internal forces.

The Face Dancer observers had remained inscrutable, but there had been things to

see in Waff. He said he would destroy the two demonstrators but what would he

do first? Would he succumb to temptation? What thoughts went through his mind

as he watched the Face Dancer male squirm in mind-blanking ecstasy?

In a way, the demonstration reminded Odrade of the Rakian dance she had seen in

the Great Square of Keen. In the short term, the dance had been deliberately

unrhythmic but the progression created a long-term rhythm that repeated itself

in some two hundred . . . steps. The dancers had stretched out their rhythm to

a remarkable degree.

As had the Face Dancer demonstrators.

Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!

Odrade thought about the dance, the long rhythm followed by chaotic violence.

Siaynoq's glorious focusing of religious energies had devolved into a different

kind of exchange. She thought about Sheeana's excited response to her glimpses

of that dance in the Great Square. Odrade remembered asking Sheeana: "What did

they share down there?"

"The dancers, silly!"

That response had not been permissible. "I've warned you about that tone,

Sheeana. Do you wish to learn immediately what a Reverend Mother can do to

punish you?"

The words played themselves like ghost messages in Odrade's mind as she looked

at the gathering darkness outside the Dar-es-Balat penthouse. A great

loneliness welled up in her. All the others had gone from this room.

Only the punished one remains!

How bright-eyed Sheeana had been in that room above the Great Square, her mind

so full of questions. "Why do you always talk about hurting and punishment?"

"You must learn discipline. How can you control others when you cannot control

yourself?"

"I don't like that lesson."

"None of us does very much . . . until later when we've learned the value of it

by experience."

As intended, that response had festered long in Sheeana's awareness. In the

end, she had revealed all she knew about the dance.

"Some of the dancers escape. Others go directly to Shaitan. The priests say

they go to Shai-hulud."

"What of the ones who survive?"

"When they recover, they must join a great dance in the desert. If Shaitan

comes there, they die. If Shaitan does not come, they are rewarded."

Odrade had seen the pattern. Sheeana's explanatory words had not been necessary

beyond that point, even though the recital had been allowed to continue. How

bitter Sheeana's voice had been!

"They get money, space in a bazaar, that kind of reward. The priests say they

have proved that they are human."

"Are the ones who fail not human?"

Sheeana had remained silent for a long time in deep thought. The track was

clear to Odrade, though: the Sisterhood's test of humanity! Her own passage

into the acceptable humanity of the Sisterhood had already been duplicated by

Sheeana. How soft that passage seemed in comparison to the other pains!

In the dim light of the museum penthouse, Odrade held up her right hand, looking

at it, remembering the agony box, and the gom jabbar poised at her neck ready to

kill her if she flinched or cried out.

Sheeana had not cried out, either. But she had known the answer to Odrade's

question even before the agony box.

"They are human but different."

Odrade spoke aloud in the empty room with its displays from the Tyrant's nochamber

hoard.

"What did you do to us, Leto? Are you only Shaitan talking to us? What would

you force us to share now?"

Was the fossil dance to become fossil sex?

"Who are you talking to, Mother?"

It was Sheeana's voice from the open doorway across the room. Her gray

postulant's robe was only a faint shape there, growing larger as she approached.

"Mother Superior sent me for you," Sheeana said as she came to a stop near

Odrade.

"I was talking to myself," Odrade said. She looked at the strangely quiet girl,

remembering the gut-wrenching excitement of that moment when the Fulcrum

Question had been asked of Sheeana.

"Do you wish to be a Reverend Mother?"

"Why are you talking to yourself, Mother?" There was a load of concern in

Sheeana's voice. The Teaching Proctors would have their hands full removing

those emotions.

"I was remembering when I asked you if you wished to be a Reverend Mother,"

Odrade said. "It prompted other thoughts."

"You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back

nothing, disobeying you in nothing."

"And you said: 'Is that all?' "

"I didn't know very much, did I? I still don't know very much."

"None of us does, child. Except that we're all in the dance together. And

Shaitan will certainly come if the least of us fails."

When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom

and training.

-The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"

The last greenish line of light fell out of the horizon before Burzmali gave the

signal for them to move. It was dark by the time they reached the far side of

Ysai and the perimeter road that was to lead them to Duncan. Clouds covered the

sky, reflecting the city's lights downward onto the shapes of the urban hovels

through which their guides directed them.

These guides bothered Lucilla. They appeared out of side streets and from

suddenly opened doorways to whisper new directions.

Too many people knew about the fugitive pair and their intended rendezvous!

She had come to grips with her hatred but the residue was a profound distrust of

every person they saw. Hiding this behind the mechanical attitudes of a playfem

with her customer had become increasingly difficult.

There was slush on the pedestrian way beside the road, most of it scattered

there by the passage of groundcars. Lucilla's feet were cold before they had

gone half a kilometer and she was forced to expend energy compensating for the

added bloodflow in her extremities.

Burzmali walked silently, his head down, apparently lost in his own worries.

Lucilla was not fooled. He heard every sound around them, saw every approaching

vehicle. He hustled them off the pathway each time a groundcar approached. The

cars went swishing past on their suspensors, the dirty slush flying from under

their fanskirts and peppering the bushes along the road. Burzmali held her down

beside him in the snow until he was sure the cars were out of sight and sound.

Not that anyone riding in them could hear much except their own whirling

passage.

They had been walking for two hours before Burzmali stopped and took stock of

the way ahead. Their destination was a perimeter community that had been

described to them as "completely safe." Lucilla knew better. No place on Gammu

was completely safe.

Yellow lights cast an undershot glow on the clouds ahead of them, marking the

location of the community. Their slushy progress took them through a tunnel

under the perimeter road and up a low hill planted to some sort of orchard. The

limbs were stark in the dim light.

Lucilla glanced upward. The clouds were thinning. Gammu had many small moons -

- fortress no-ships. Some of them had been placed by Teg but she glimpsed lines

of new ones sharing the guardian role. They appeared to be about four times the

size of the brightest stars and they often traveled together, which made their

reflected light useful but erratic because they moved fast -- up across the sky

and below the horizon in only a few hours. She glimpsed a string of six such

moons through a break in the clouds, wondering if they were part of Teg's

defense system.

Momentarily, she reflected on the inherent weakness of the siege mentality that

such defenses represented. Teg had been right about them. Mobility was the key

to military success but she doubted that he had meant mobility on foot.

There were no easy hiding places on the snow-whitened slope and Lucilla felt

Burzmali's nervousness. What could they do here if someone came? A snowcovered

depression led down from their position to the left, angling toward the

community. It was not a road but she thought it might be a path.

"Down this way," Burzmali said, leading them into the depression.

The snow came up to their calves.

"I hope these people are trustworthy," she said.

"They hate the Honored Matres," he said. "That's enough for me."

"The ghola had better be there!" She held back an even more angry response but

could not keep herself from adding: "Their hatred isn't enough for me."

It was better to expect the worst, she thought.

She had come to a reassuring thought about Burzmali, though. He was like Teg.

Neither of them pursued a course that would lead them into a dead end -- not if

they could help it. She suspected there were support forces concealed in the

bushes around them even now.

The snow-covered trail ended in a paved pathway, gently curved inward from the

edges and kept free of snow by a melt system. There was a trickle of dampness

in the center. Lucilla was several steps onto this path before she recognized

what it must be -- a magchute. It was an ancient magnetic transport base that

once had carried goods or raw materials to a pre-Scattering factory.

"It gets steeper here," Burzmali warned her. "They've carved steps in it but

watch it. They're not very deep."

They came presently to the end of the magchute. It stopped at a decrepit wall -

- local brick atop a plasteel foundation. The faint light of stars in a

clearing sky revealed crude workmanship in the bricks -- typical Famine-Times

construction. The wall was a mass of vines and mottled fungus. The growth did

little to conceal the cracked courses of the bricks and the crude efforts to

fill chinks with mortar. A single row of narrow windows looked down onto the

place where the magchute debouched into a mass of bushes and weeds. Three of

the windows glowed electric blue with some inner activity that was accompanied

by faint crackling sounds.

"This was a factory in the old days," Burzmali said.

"I have eyes and a memory," Lucilla snapped. Did this grunting male think her

completely devoid of intelligence?

Something creaked dismally off to their left. A patch of sod and weeds lifted

atop a cellar door accompanied by an upward glow of brilliant yellow light.

"Quick!" Burzmali led her at a swift run across thick vegetation and down a

flight of steps exposed by the lifting door. The door creaked closed behind

them in a grumbling of machinery.

Lucilla found herself in a large space with a low ceiling. Light came from long

lines of modern glowglobes strung along massive plasteel girders overhead. The

floor was swept clean but showed scratches and indentations of activity, the

locations no doubt of bygone machinery. She glimpsed movement far off across

the open space. A young woman in a version of Lucilla's dragon robe trotted

toward them.

Lucilla sniffed. There was a stink of acid in the room and undertones of

something foul.

"This was a Harkonnen factory," Burzmali said. "I wonder what they made here?"

The young woman stopped in front of Lucilla. She had a willowy figure, elegant

in shape and motion under the clinging robe. A subcutaneous glow came from her

face. It spoke of exercise and good health. The green eyes, though, were hard

and chilling in the way they measured everything they saw.

"So they sent more than one of us to watch this place," she said.

Lucilla put out a restraining hand as Burzmali started to respond. This woman

was not what she seemed. No more than I am! Lucilla chose her words carefully.

"We always know each other, it seems."

The young woman smiled. "I watched your approach. I could not believe my

eyes." She swept a sneering glance across Burzmali. "This was supposed to be a

customer?"

"And guide," Lucilla said. She noted the puzzlement on Burzmali's face and

prayed he would not ask the wrong question. This young woman was danger!

"Weren't we expected?" Burzmali asked.

"Ahhhh, it speaks," the young woman said, laughing. Her laugh was as cold as

her eyes.

"I prefer that you do not refer to me as 'it,' " Burzmali said.

"I call Gammu scum anything I wish," the young woman said. "Don't speak to me

of your preferences!"

"What did you call me?" Burzmali was tired and his anger came boiling up at

this unexpected attack.

"I call you anything I choose, scum!"

Burzmali had suffered enough. Before Lucilla could stop him, he uttered a low

growl and aimed a heavy slap at the young woman.

The blow did not land.

Lucilla watched in fascination as the woman dropped under the attack, caught

Burzmali's sleeve as one might catch a bit of fabric blowing in the wind and, in

a blindingly fast pirouette whose speed almost hid its delicacy, sent Burzmali

skidding across the floor. The woman dropped to a half crouch on one foot, the

other prepared to kick.

"I shall kill him now," she said.

Lucilla, not knowing what might happen next, folded her body sideways, barely

avoiding the woman's suddenly outthrust foot, and countered with a standard Bene

Gesserit sabard that dumped the young woman on her back doubled up where the

blow had caught her in the abdomen.

"A suggestion that you kill my guide is uncalled for, whatever your name is,"

Lucilla said.

The young woman gasped for breath, then, panting between words: "I am called

Murbella, Great Honored Matre. You shame me by defeating me with such a slow

attack. Why do you do that?"

"You needed a lesson," Lucilla said.

"I am only newly robed, Great Honored Matre. Please forgive me. I thank you

for the splendid lesson and will thank you every time I employ your response,

which I now commit to memory." She bowed her head, then leaped lightly to her

feet, an impish grin on her face.

In her coldest voice, Lucilla asked: "Do you know who I am?" Out of the

corners of her eyes, she saw Burzmali regain his feet with painful slowness. He

remained at one side, watching the women, but anger burned his face.

"From your ability to teach me that lesson, I see that you are who you are,

Great Honored Matre. Am I forgiven?" The impish grin had vanished from

Murbella's face. She stood with head bowed.

"You are forgiven. Is there a no-ship coming?"

"So they say here. We are prepared for it." Murbella glanced at Burzmali.

"He is still useful to me and it is required that he accompany me," Lucilla

said.

"Very good, Great Honored Matre. Does your forgiveness include your name?"

"No!"

Murbella sighed. "We have captured the ghola," she said. "He came as a

Tleilaxu from the south. I was just about to bed him when you arrived."

Burzmali hobbled toward them. Lucilla saw that he had recognized the danger.

This "completely safe" place had been infested by enemies! But the enemies

still knew very little.

"The ghola was not injured?" Burzmali asked.

"It still speaks," Murbella said. "How odd."

"You will not bed the ghola," Lucilla said. "That one is my special charge!"

"Fair game, Great Honored Matre. And I marked him first. He is already partly

subdued."

She laughed once more, with a callous abandonment that shocked Lucilla. "This

way. There is a place where you can watch."

May you die on Caladan!

-Ancient Drinking Toast

Duncan tried to remember where he was. He knew Tormsa was dead. Blood had

spurted from Tormsa's eyes. Yes, he remembered that clearly. They had entered

a dark building and light had flared abruptly all around them. Duncan felt an

ache in the back of his head. A blow? He tried to move and his muscles refused

to obey.

He remembered sitting at the edge of a wide lawn. There was some kind of

bowling game in progress -- eccentric balls that bounced and darted with no

apparent design. The players were young men in a common costume of . . . Giedi

Prime!

"They are practicing to be old men," he said. He remembered saying that.

His companion, a young woman, looked at him blankly.

"Only old men should play these outdoor games," he said.

"Oh?"

It was an unanswerable question. She put him down with only the simplest of

verbal gestures.

And betrayed me the next instant to the Harkonnens!

So that was a pre-ghola memory.

Ghola!

He remembered the Bene Gesserit Keep on Gammu. The library: holophotos and

triphotos of the Atreides Duke, Leto I. Teg's resemblance was not an accident:

a bit taller but otherwise it was all there -- that long, thin face with its

high-bridged nose, the renowned Atreides charisma . . .

Teg!

He remembered the old Bashar's last gallant stand in the Gammu night.

Where am I?

Tormsa had brought him here. They had been moving along an overgrown track on

the outskirts of Ysai. Barony. It started to snow before they were two hundred

meters up the track. Wet snow that clung to them. Cold, miserable snow that

set their teeth chattering within a minute. They paused to bring up their hoods

and close the insulated jackets. That was better. But it would be night soon.

Much colder.

"There is a shelter of sorts up ahead," Tormsa said. "We will wait there for

the night."

When Duncan did not speak, Tormsa said: "It won't be warm but it will be dry."

Duncan saw the gray outline of the place in about three hundred paces. It stood

out against the dirty snow some two stories tall. He recognized it immediately:

a Harkonnen counting outpost. Observers here had counted (and sometimes killed)

the people who passed. It was built of native dirt turned into one giant brick

by the simple expedient of preforming it in mud bricks and then superheating it

with a wide-bore burner, the kind the Harkonnens had used to control mobs.

As they came up to it, Duncan saw the remains of a full-field defensive screen

with fire-lance gaps aimed at the approaches. Someone had smashed the system a

long time ago. Twisted holes in the field net were partly overgrown with

bushes. But the fire-lance gaps remained open. Oh, yes -- to allow people

inside a view of the approaches.

Tormsa paused and listened, studying their surroundings with care.

Duncan looked at the counting station. He remembered them well. What

confronted him was a thing that had sprouted like a deformed growth from an

original tubular seed. The surface had been baked to a glassine finish. Warts

and protrusions betrayed where it had been superheated. The erosion of eons had

left fine scratches in it but the original shape remained. He looked upward and

identified part of the old suspensor lift system. Someone had jury-rigged a

block and tackle to the outbar.

So the opening through the full-field screen was of recent making.

Tormsa disappeared into this opening.

As though a switch had been thrown, Duncan's memory vision changed. He was in

the no-globe's library with Teg. The projector was producing a series of views

through modern Ysai. The idea of modern took on an odd overtone for him.

Barony had been a modern city, if you thought of modern as meaning

technologically usiform up to the norms of its time. It had relied exclusively

on suspensor guide-beams for transport of people and material -- all of them

high up. No ground-level openings. He was explaining this to Teg.

The plan translated physically into a city that used every possible square meter

of vertical and horizontal space for things other than movement of goods and

humans. The guide-beam openings required only enough head room and elbow room

for the universal transport pods.

Teg spoke: "The ideal shape would be tubular with a flat top for the

'thopters."

"The Harkonnens preferred squares and rectangles."

That was true.

Duncan remembered Barony with a clearness that made him shiver. Suspensor

tracks shot through it like worm holes -- straight, curved, flipping off at

oblique angles . . . up, down, sideways. Except for the rectangular absolute

imposed by Harkonnen whim, Barony was built to a particular population-design

criterion: maximum stuffing with minimum expenditure of materials.

"The flat top was the only human-oriented space in the damned thing!" He

remembered telling that to Teg and Lucilla both.

Up there on top were penthouses, guard stations at all the edges, at the

'thopter pads, at all the entries from below, around all of the parks. People

living on the top could forget about the mass of flesh squirming in close

proximity just below them. No smell or noise from that jumble was allowed on

top. Servants were forced to bathe and change into sanitary clothing before

emerging.

Teg had a question: "Why did that massed humanity permit itself to live in such

a crush?"

The answer was obvious and he explained it. The outside was a dangerous place.

The city's managers made it appear even more dangerous than it actually was.

Besides, few in there knew anything about a better life Outside. The only

better life they knew about was on top. And the only way up there was through

an absolutely abasing servility.

"It will happen and there's nothing you can do about it!"

That was another voice echoing in Duncan's skull. He heard it clearly.

Paul!

How odd it was, Duncan thought. There was an arrogance in the prescient like

the arrogance of the Mentat seated in his most brittle logic.

I never before thought of Paul as arrogant.

Duncan stared at his own face in a mirror. He realized with part of his mind

that this was a pre-ghola memory. Abruptly, it was another mirror, his own face

but different. That darkly rounded face had begun to shape into the harsher

lines it could have if it matured. He looked into his own eyes. Yes, those

were his eyes. He had heard someone describe his eyes once as "cave sitters."

They were deeply inset under the brows and riding atop high cheeks. He had been

told it was difficult to determine if his eyes were dark blue or dark green

unless the light were just right.

A woman said that. He could not remember the woman.

He tried to reach up and touch his hair but his hands would not obey. He

remembered then that his hair had been bleached. Who did that? An old woman.

His hair was no longer a cap of dark ringlets.

There was the Duke Leto staring at him in the doorway to the dining room on

Caladan.

"We will eat now," the Duke said. It was a royal command saved from arrogance

by a faint grin that said: "Somebody had to say it."

What is happening to my mind?

He remembered following Tormsa to the place where Tormsa said the no-ship would

meet them.

It was a large building bulking in the night. There were several smaller

outbuildings below the larger structure. They appeared to be occupied. Voices

and machine sounds could be heard in them. No faces showed at the narrow

windows. No door opened. Duncan smelled cooking as they passed the larger of

the outbuildings. This reminded him that they had only eaten dry strips of

leathery stuff that Tormsa called "travel food" that day.

They entered the dark building.

Light flared.

Tormsa's eyes exploded in blood.

Darkness.

Duncan looked at a woman's face. He had seen a face like this one before: a

single tride taken from a longer holo sequence. Where was that? Where had he

seen that? It was an almost oval face with just a small widening at the brow to

mar its curved perfection.

She spoke: "My name is Murbella. You will not remember that but I share it now

as I mark you. I have selected you."

I do remember you, Murbella.

Green eyes set wide under arched brows gave her features a focal region that

left chin and small mouth for later examination. The mouth was full-lipped and

he knew it could become pouting in repose.

The green eyes stared into his eyes. How cold that look. The power in it.

Something touched his cheek.

He opened his eyes. This was no memory! This was happening to him. It was

happening now!

Murbella! She had been here and she had left him. Now she was back. He

remembered awakening naked on a soft surface . . . a sleeping pad. His hands

recognized it. Murbella unclothed just above him, green eyes staring at him

with a terrible intensity. She touched him simultaneously in many places. A

soft humming issued from between her lips.

He felt the swift erection, painful in its rigidity.

No power of resistance remained in him. Her hands moved over his body. Her

tongue. The humming! All around him, her mouth touching him. The nipples of

her breasts grazed his cheeks, his chest. When he saw her eyes, he saw

conscious design.

Murbella had returned and she was doing it once more!

Over her right shoulder, he glimpsed a wide plaz window -- Lucilla and Burzmali

behind that barrier. A dream? Burzmali pressed his palms against the plaz.

Lucilla stood with folded arms, a look of mingled rage and curiosity on her

face.

Murbella murmured in his right ear: "My hands are fire."

Her body hid the faces behind the plaz. He felt the fire wherever she touched

him.

Abruptly, the flame engulfed his mind. Hidden places within him came alive. He

saw red capsules like a string of gleaming sausages passing before his eyes. He

felt feverish. He was an engorged capsule, excitement flaring throughout his

awareness. Those capsules! He knew them! They were himself . . . they were .

. .

All of the Duncan Idahos, original and the serial gholas flowed into his mind.

They were like bursting seedpods denying all other existence except themselves.

He saw himself crushed beneath a great worm with a human face.

"Damn you, Leto!"

Crushed and crushed and crushed . . . time and again.

"Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! . . ."

He died under a Sardaukar sword. Pain exploded into a bright glare swallowed by

darkness.

He died in a 'thopter crash. He died under the knife of a Fish Speaker

assassin. He died and died and died.

And he lived.

The memories flooded him until he wondered how he could hold them all. The

sweetness of a newborn daughter held in his arms. The musky odors of a

passionate mate. The cascade of flavors from a fine Danian wine. The panting

exertions of the practice floor.

The axlotl tanks!

He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical

hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw

a great mound of female flesh -- monstrous in her almost immobile grossness . .

. a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers.

Axlotl tank?

He gasped in the grip of the serial memories that cascaded into him. All of

those lives! All of those lives!

Now, he remembered what the Tleilaxu had planted in him, the submerged awareness

that awaited only this moment of seduction by a Bene Gesserit Imprinter.

But this was Murbella and she was not Bene Gesserit.

She was here, though, ready at hand and the Tleilaxu pattern took over his

reactions.

Duncan hummed softly and touched her, moving with an agility that shocked

Murbella. He should not be this responsive! Not this way! His right hand

fluttered against the lips of her vagina while his left hand caressed the base

of her spine. At the same time, his mouth moved gently over her nose, down to

her lips, down to the crease of her left armpit.

And all the time he hummed softly in a rhythm that pulsed through her body,

lulling . . . weakening . . .

She tried to push away from him as he increased the pace of her responses.

How did he know to touch me there at just that instant? And there! And there!

Oh, Holy Rock of Dur, how does he know this?

Duncan marked the swelling of her breasts and saw the congestion in her nose.

He saw the way her nipples stood out stiffly, the areolae darkening around them.

She moaned and spread her legs wide.

Great Matre, help me!

But the only Great Matre she could think of was locked securely away from this

room, restrained by a bolted door and a plaz barrier.

Desperate energy flowed into Murbella. She responded in the only way she knew:

touching, caressing -- using all of the techniques she had learned so carefully

in the long years of her apprenticeship.

To each thing she did, Duncan produced a wildly stimulating countermove.

Murbella found that she no longer could control all of her own responses. She

was reacting automatically from some well of knowledge deeper than her training.

She felt her vaginal muscles tighten. She felt the swift release of lubricant

fluid. When Duncan entered her she heard herself groan. Her arms, her hands,

her legs, her entire body moved with both of the response systems -- welltrained

automation and the deeper, deeper plunging awareness of other demands.

How did he do this to me?

Waves of ecstatic contractions began in the smooth muscles of her pelvis. She

sensed his simultaneous response and felt the hard slap of his ejaculation.

This heightened her own response. Ecstatic pulsations drove outward from the

contractions in her vagina . . . outward . . . outward. The ecstasy engulfed

her entire sensorium. She saw a spreading blaze of whiteness against her

eyelids. Every muscle quivered with an ecstasy she had not imagined possible

for herself.

Again, the waves spread outward.

Again and again . . .

She lost count of the repetitions.

When Duncan moaned, she moaned and the waves swept outward once more.

And again . . .

There was no sensation of time or surroundings, only this immersion in a

continuing ecstasy.

She wanted it to go on forever and she wanted it to stop. This should not be

happening to a female! An Honored Matre must not experience this. These were

the sensations by which men were governed.

Duncan emerged from the response pattern that had been implanted in him. There

was something else he was supposed to do. He could not remember what it was.

Lucilla?

He imagined her dead in front of him. But this woman was not Lucilla; this was

. . . this was Murbella.

There was very little strength in him. He lifted himself off Murbella and

managed to sink back onto his knees. Her hands were fluttering in an agitation

he could not understand.

Murbella tried to push Duncan away from her and he was not there. Her eyes

snapped open.

Duncan knelt above her. She had no idea how much time had passed. She tried to

find the energy to sit up and failed. Slowly, reason returned.

She stared into Duncan's eyes, knowing now who this man must be. Man? He was

only a youth. But he had done things . . . things . . . All of the Honored

Matres had been warned. There was a ghola armed with forbidden knowledge by the

Tleilaxu. That ghola must be killed!

A small burst of energy surged into her muscles. She raised herself on her

elbows. Gasping for breath, she tried to roll away from him and fell back to

the soft surface.

By the Holy Rock of Dur! This male could not be permitted to live! He was a

ghola and he could do things permitted only to Honored Matres. She wanted to

strike out at him and, at the same time, she wanted to pull him back onto her

body. The ecstasy! She knew that whatever he asked of her at this moment she

would do. She would do it for him.

No! I must kill him!

Once more, she raised herself onto her elbows and, from there, managed to sit

up. Her weakened gaze crossed the window where she had confined the Great

Honored Matre and the guide. They still stood there looking at her. The man's

face was flushed. The face of the Great Honored Matre was as unmoving as the

Rock of Dur itself.

How can she just stand there after what she has seen here? The Great Honored

Matre must kill this ghola!

Murbella beckoned to the woman behind the plaz and rolled toward the locked door

beside the sleeping pad. She barely managed to unbolt and open the door before

falling back. Her eyes looked up at the kneeling youth. Sweat glistened on his

body. His lovely body . . .

No!

Desperation drove her off onto the floor. She was on her knees there and then,

mostly by will power, she stood. Energy was returning but her legs trembled as

she staggered around the foot of the sleeping pad.

I will do it myself without thinking. I must do it.

Her body swayed from side to side. She tried to steady herself and aimed a blow

at his neck. She knew this blow from long hours of practice. It would crush

the larynx. The victim would die of asphyxiation.

Duncan dodged the blow easily, but he was slow . . . slow.

Murbella almost fell beside him but the hands of the Great Honored Matre saved

her.

"Kill him," Murbella gasped. "He's the one we were warned about. He's the

one!"

Murbella felt hands on her neck, the fingers pressing fiercely at the nerve

bundles beneath the ears.

The last thing Murbella heard before unconsciousness was the Great Honored Matre

saying: "We will kill no one. This ghola goes to Rakis."

The worst potential competition for any organism can come from its own kind.

The species consumes necessities. Growth is limited by that necessity which is

present in the least amount. The least favorable condition controls the rate of

growth. (Law of the Minimum)

-From "Lessons of Arrakis"

The building stood back from a wide avenue behind a screen of trees and

carefully tended flowering hedges. The hedges had been staggered in a maze

pattern with man-high white posts to define the planted areas. No vehicle

entering or leaving could do so at any speed above a slow crawl. Teg's military

awareness took all of this in as the armored groundcar carried him up to the

door. Field Marshal Muzzafar, the only other occupant in the rear of the car,

recognized Teg's assessment and said:

"We're protected from above by a beam enfilading system." A soldier in

camouflage uniform with a long lasgun on a sling over one shoulder opened the

door and snapped to attention as Muzzafar emerged.

Teg followed. He recognized this place. It was one of the "safe" addresses

Bene Gesserit Security had provided for him. Obviously, the Sisterhood's

information was out of date. Recently out of date, though, because Muzzafar

gave no indication that Teg might know this place.

As they crossed to the door, Teg noted that another protective system he had

seen on his first tour of Ysai remained intact. It was a barely noticeable

difference in the posts along the trees-and-hedges barriers. Those posts were

scanlyzers operated from a room somewhere in the building. Their diamond-shaped

connectors "read" the area between them and the building. At the gentle push of

a button in the watchers' room, the scanlyzers would make small chunks of meat

out of any living flesh crossing their fields.

At the door, Muzzafar paused and looked at Teg. "The Honored Matre you are

about to meet is the most powerful of all who have come here. She does not

tolerate anything but complete obedience."

"I take it that you are warning me."

"I thought you would understand. Call her Honored Matre. Nothing else. In we

go. I've taken the liberty of having a new uniform made for you."

The room where Muzzafar ushered him was one Teg had not seen on his previous

visit. Small and crammed with ticking black-paneled boxes, it left little room

for the two of them. A single yellow glowglobe at the ceiling illuminated the

place. Muzzafar crowded himself into a corner while Teg got out of the grimed

and wrinkled singlesuit he had worn since the no-globe.

"Sorry I can't offer you a bath as well," Muzzafar said. "But we must not

delay. She gets impatient."

A different personality came over Teg with the uniform. It was a familiar black

garment, even to the starbursts at the collar. So he was to appear before this

Honored Matre as the Sisterhood's Bashar. Interesting. He was once more

completely the Bashar, not that this powerful sense of identity had ever left

him. The uniform completed it and announced it, though. In this garment there

was no need to emphasize in any other way precisely who he was.

"That's better," Muzzafar said as he led Teg out into the entry hallway and

through a door Teg remembered. Yes, this was where he had met the "safe"

contacts. He had recognized the room's function then and nothing appeared to

have changed it. Rows of microscopic comeyes lined the intersection of ceiling

and walls, disguised as silver guide strips for the hovering glowglobes.

The one who is watched does not see, Teg thought. And the Watchers have a

billion eyes.

His doubled vision told him there was danger here but nothing immediately

violent.

This room, about five meters long and four wide, was a place for doing very

high-level business. The merchandise would never be an actual exposure of

money. People here would see only portable equivalents of whatever passed for

currency -- melange, perhaps, or milky soostones about the size of an eyeball,

perfectly round, at once glossy and soft in appearance but radiant with rainbow

changes directed by whatever light fell on them or whatever flesh they touched.

This was a place where a danikin of melange or a small fold-pouch of soostones

would be accepted as a natural occurrence. The price of a planet could be

exchanged here with only a nod, an eyeblink or a low-voiced murmur. No wallets

of currency would ever be produced here. The closest thing might be a thin case

of translux out of whose poison-guarded interior would come thinner sheets of

ridulian crystal with very large numbers inscribed on them by unforgeable

dataprint.

"This is a bank," Teg said.

"What?" Muzzafar had been staring at the closed door in the opposite wall.

"Oh, yes. She'll be along presently."

"She is watching us now, of course."

Muzzafar did not answer but he looked gloomy.

Teg glanced around him. Had anything been changed since his previous visit? He

saw no significant alterations. He wondered if shrines such as this one had

undergone much change at all over the eons. There was a dewcarpet on the floor

as soft as brantdown and as white as the underbelly of a fur whale. It

shimmered with a false sense of wetness that only the eye detected. A bare foot

(not that this place had ever seen a bare foot) would feel caressing dryness.

There was a narrow table about two meters long almost in the center of the room.

The top was at least twenty millimeters thick. Teg guessed it was Danian

jacaranda. The deep brown surface had been polished to a sheen that drank the

vision and revealed far underneath veins like river currents. There were only

four admiral's chairs around the table, chairs crafted by a master artisan from

the same wood as the table, cushioned on seat and back with lyrleather of the

exact tone of the polished wood.

Only four chairs. More would have been an overstatement. He had not tried one

of the chairs before and he did not seat himself now, but he knew what his flesh

would find there -- comfort almost up to the level of a despised chairdog. Not

quite at that degree of softness and conformity to bodily shape, of course. Too

much comfort could lure the sitter into relaxation. This room and its

furnishings said: "Be comfortable here but remain alert."

You not only had to have your wits about you in this place but also a great

power of violence behind you, Teg thought. He had summed it up that way before

and his opinion had not changed.

There were no windows but the ones he had seen from the outside had danced with

lines of light-energy barriers to repel intruders and prevent escape. Such

barriers brought their own dangers, Teg knew, but the implications were

important. Just keeping the energy flow in them would feed a large city for the

lifetime of its longest-lived inhabitant.

There was nothing casual about this display of wealth.

The door that Muzzafar watched opened with a gentle click.

Danger!

A woman in a shimmering golden robe swept into the room. Lines of red-orange

danced in the fabric.

She is old!

Teg had not expected her to be this ancient. Her face was a wrinkled mask. The

eyes were deeply set green ice. Her nose was an elongated beak whose shadow

touched thin lips and repeated the sharp angle of the chin. A black skullcap

almost covered her gray hair.

Muzzafar bowed.

"Leave us," she said.

He left without a word, going out through the door by which she had entered.

When the door closed behind him, Teg said, "Honored Matre."

"So you recognize this as a bank." Her voice carried only a slight trembling.

"Of course."

"There are always means of transferring large sums or selling power," she said.

"I do not speak of the power that runs factories but of the power that runs

people."

"And that usually passes under the strange names of government or society or

civilization," Teg said.

"I suspected you would be very intelligent," she said. She pulled out a chair

and sat but did not indicate that Teg should seat himself. "I think of myself

as a banker. That saves a lot of muddy and distressful circumlocutions."

Teg did not respond. There seemed no need. He continued to study her.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

"I did not expect you to be this old," he said.

"Heh, heh, heh. We have many surprises for you, Bashar. Later, a younger

Honored Matre may murmur her name to mark you. Praise Dur if that happens."

He nodded, not understanding much of what she said.

"This is also a very old building," she said. "I watched you when you came in.

Does that surprise you, too?"

"No."

"This building has remained essentially unchanged for several thousand years.

It is built of materials that will last much longer still."

He glanced at the table.

"Oh, not the wood. But underneath, it's polastine, polaz, and pormabat. The

three P-Os are never sneered at where necessity calls for them."

Teg remained silent.

"Necessity," she said. "Do you object to any of the necessary things that have

been done to you?"

"My objections don't matter," he said. What was she getting at? Studying him,

of course. As he studied her.

"Do you think others have ever objected to what you did to them?"

"Undoubtedly."

"You're a natural commander, Bashar. I think you'll be very valuable to us."

"I've always thought I was most valuable to myself."

"Bashar! Look at my eyes!"

He obeyed, seeing little flecks of orange drifting in across the whites. The

sense of peril was acute.

"If you ever see my eyes fully orange, beware!" she said. "You will have

offended me beyond my ability to tolerate."

He nodded.

"I like it that you can command but you cannot command me! You command the muck

and that is the only function we have for such as you."

"The muck?"

She waved a hand, a negligent motion. "Out there. You know them. Their

curiosity is narrow gauge. No great issues ever enter their awareness."

"I thought that was what you meant."

"We work to keep it that way," she said. "Everything goes to them through a

tight filter, which excludes all but that which has immediate survival value."

"No great issues," he said.

"You are offended but it doesn't matter," she said. "To those out there, a

great issue is: 'Will I eat today?' 'Do I have shelter tonight that will not

be invaded by attackers or vermin?' Luxury? Luxury is the possession of a drug

or a member of the opposite sex who can, for a time, keep the beast at bay."

And you are the beast, he thought.

"I am taking some time with you, Bashar, because I see that you could be more

valuable to us even than Muzzafar. And he is extremely valuable indeed. Even

now, we are repaying him for bringing you to us in a receptive condition."

When Teg still remained silent, she chuckled. "You do not think you are

receptive?"

Teg held himself quiet. Had they given him some drug in his food? He saw the

flickering of doubled vision but the movements of violence had receded as the

orange flecks left the Honored Matre's eyes. Her feet were to be avoided,

though. They were deadly weapons.

"It's just that you think of the muck in the wrong way," she said. "Luckily,

they are most self-limiting. They know this somewhere in the damps of their

deepest consciousness but cannot spare the time to deal with that or anything

else except the immediate scramble for survival."

"They cannot be improved?" he asked.

"They must not be improved! Oh, we see to it that self-improvement remains a

great fad among them. Nothing real about it, of course."

"Another luxury they must be denied," he said.

"Not a luxury! Nonexistent! It must be occluded at all times behind a barrier

that we like to call protective ignorance."

"What you don't know cannot hurt you."

"I don't like your tone, Bashar."

Again, the orange flecks danced in her eyes. The sense of violence diminished,

however, as she once more chuckled. "The thing you beware of is the opposite of

what-you-don't-know. We teach that new knowledge can be dangerous. You see the

obvious extension: All new knowledge is non-survival!"

The door behind the Honored Matre opened and Muzzafar returned. It was a

changed Muzzafar, his face flushed, his eyes bright. He stopped behind the

Honored Matre's chair.

"One day, I will be able to permit you behind me this way," she said. "It is in

my power to do this."

What had they done to Muzzafar? Teg wondered. The man looked almost drugged.

"You do see that I have power?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. "That's obvious."

"I am a banker, remember? We have just made a deposit with our loyal Muzzafar.

Do you thank us, Muzzafar?"

"I do, Honored Matre." His voice was hoarse.

"I'm sure you understand this kind of power generally, Bashar," she said. "The

Bene Gesserit trained you well. They are quite talented but not, I fear, as

talented as we are."

"And I am told you are quite numerous," he said.

"Our numbers are not the key, Bashar. Power such as ours has a way of becoming

channeled so that it can be controlled by small numbers."

She was like a Reverend Mother, he thought, in the way she could appear to

answer without revealing much.

"In essence," she said, "power such as ours is allowed to become the substance

of survival for many people. Then, the threat of withdrawal is all that's

required for us to rule." She glanced over her shoulder. "Would you wish us to

withdraw our favor from you Muzzafar?"

"No, Honored Matre." He was actually trembling!

"You have found a new drug," Teg said.

Her laughter was spontaneous and loud, almost raucous. "No, Bashar! We have an

old one."

"And you would make an addict of me?"

"Like all the others we control, Bashar, you have a choice: death or

obedience."

"That is a rather old choice," he agreed. What was her immediate threat? He

could sense no violence. Quite the contrary. His doubled vision showed him

broken glimpses of extremely sensuous overtones. Did they think they could

imprint him?

She smiled at him, a knowing expression with something frigid under it.

"Will he serve us well, Muzzafar?"

"I believe so, Honored Matre."

Teg frowned in thought. There was something deeply evil about this pair. They

went against every morality by which he modeled his behavior. It was well to

remember that neither of them knew this strange thing that had speeded his

reactions.

They seemed to be enjoying his puzzled discomfiture.

Teg took some reassurance from the realization that neither of these two really

enjoyed life. He could see that in them clearly with eyes the Sisterhood had

educated. The Honored Matre and Muzzafar had forgotten or, most likely,

abandoned everything that supported the survival of joyous humans. He thought

they probably no longer were capable of finding a real wellspring of joy in

their own flesh. Theirs would have to be mostly a voyeur's existence, the

eternal observer, always remembering what it had been like before they had taken

the turning into whatever it was they had become. Even when they wallowed in

the performance of something that once had meant gratification, they would have

to reach for new extremes each time just to touch the edges of their own

memories.

The Honored Matre's grin widened, showing a line of gleaming white teeth. "Look

at him, Muzzafar. He has not the slightest conception of what we can do."

Teg heard this but he also saw with eyes trained by the Bene Gesserit. Not a

milligram of naivete remained in either of these two. Nothing was expected to

surprise them. Nothing could be truly new for them. Still, they plotted and

devised, hoping that this extreme would produce the remembered thrill. They

knew it would not, of course, and they expected to carry away from the

experience only more burning rage out of which to fashion another attempt at the

unreachable. That was how their thinking went.

Teg designed a smile for them, using all of the skills he had learned at Bene

Gesserit hands. It was a smile full of compassion, of understanding and real

pleasure in his own existence. He knew it for the most deadly insult he could

hurl at them and he saw it hit. Muzzafar glowered at him. The Honored Matre

went from orange-eyed rage to an abrupt surprise and then, quite slowly, to

dawning pleasure. She had not expected this! It was something new!

"Muzzafar," she said, the orange receding from her eyes, "bring the Honored

Matre who has been chosen to mark our Bashar."

Teg, his doubled vision showing the immediate peril, understood at last. He

could feel awareness of his own future spreading outward like waves as the power

grew in him. The wild change in him was continuing! He felt the energy expand.

With it came understanding and choices. He saw himself as the whirlwind

rampaging through this building -- bodies scattered behind him (Muzzafar and the

Honored Matre among them) and the whole complex looking like an abattoir when he

departed.

Must I do that? he wondered.

For each one he killed, more would have to be killed. He saw the necessity of

it, though, as he saw at last the Tyrant's design. The pain he could see for

himself almost made him cry out but he held it back.

"Yes, bring this Honored Matre to me," he said, knowing that this would be one

less for him to seek out and destroy elsewhere in the building. The room of the

scanlyzer controls must be taken out first.

O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.

-Sign over Arrakeen Landing Field (Historical Records: Dar-es-Balat)

Taraza watched a snow-flutter of falling blossoms against the silvery sky of a

Rakian morning. There was an opalescent sheen to the sky that, despite all of

her preparatory briefings, she had not anticipated. Rakis held many surprises.

The smell of mock orange was powerful here at the edge of the Dar-es-Balat roof

garden, overriding all other odors.

Never believe that you have plumbed the depths of any place . . . or of any

human, she reminded herself.

Conversation was ended out here but not the echoes of the spoken thoughts they

had exchanged only minutes ago. All agreed, though, that it was time for

action. Soon, Sheeana would "dance a worm" for them and once more demonstrate

her mastery.

Waff and a new priestly representative would share this "holy event" but Taraza

was sure neither of them knew the real nature of what they were about to

witness. Waff bore watching, of course. He still carried that air of irritated

disbelief in everything he saw or heard. It was a strange mixture with his

underlying awe at being on Rakis. The catalyst was obviously his rage over the

fact that fools ruled here.

Odrade returned from the meeting room and stopped beside Taraza.

"I am extremely disquieted by the reports from Gammu," Taraza said. "Do you

bring something new?"

"No. Things are obviously still chaotic there."

"Tell me, Dar, what do you think we should do?"

"I keep remembering the Tyrant's words to Chenoeh: 'The Bene Gesserit are so

close to what they should be, yet so far.' "

Taraza pointed at the open desert beyond the museum city's qanat. "He's still

out there, Dar. I'm sure of it." Taraza turned to face Odrade. "And Sheeana

speaks to him."

"He told so many lies," Odrade said.

"But he didn't lie about his own incarnation. Remember what he said. 'Every

descendant part of me will carry some of my awareness locked away within it,

lost and helpless-pearls of me moving blindly in the sand, caught in an endless

dream.' "

"You bank a great deal on your belief in the power of that dream," Odrade said.

"We must recover the Tyrant's design! All of it!"

Odrade sighed but did not speak.

"Never underestimate the power of an idea," Taraza said. "The Atreides were

ever philosophers in their governance. Philosophy is always dangerous because

it promotes the creation of new ideas."

Still, Odrade did not respond.

"The worm carries it all within him, Dar! All of the forces he set in motion

are still in him."

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Tar?"

"I am punishing you, Dar. Just as the Tyrant is still punishing us."

"For not being what we should be? Ahh, here come Sheeana and the others."

"The worm's language, Dar. That is the important thing."

"If you say so, Mother Superior."

Taraza sent an angry stare at Odrade, who moved forward to greet the newcomers.

There was a disturbing gloom in Odrade.

The presence of Sheeana, though, restored Taraza's sense of purpose. An alert

little thing, Sheeana. Very good material. Sheeana had demonstrated her dance

the previous night, performing in the great museum room against a tapestry

background, an exotic dance against an exotic spice-fiber hanging with its image

of desert and worms. She appeared to be almost a part of the hanging, a figure

projected forward from the stylized dunes and their elaborately detailed

coursing worms. Taraza recalled how Sheeana's brown hair had been thrown

outward by the whirling movements of the dance, swinging in a fuzzy arc.

Sidelighting accented the reddish glints in her hair. Her eyes had been closed

but it was not a face in repose. Excitement betrayed itself in the passionate

set of her wide mouth, the flaring of her nostrils, the forward thrust of her

chin. Her motions had conveyed an inner sophistication that belied her youth.

The dance is her language, Taraza thought. Odrade is correct. Seeing it, we

will learn it.

Waff had something of a withdrawn look this morning. It was difficult to

determine if his eyes were looking outward or inward.

With Waff was Tulushan, a darkly handsome Rakian, the priesthood's chosen

representative at today's "holy event." Taraza, meeting him at the

demonstration dance, had found it extraordinary how Tulushan never needed to say

"but," and yet the word was always there in everything he uttered. A perfect

bureaucrat. He rightly expected to go far but those expectations would soon

encounter their ultimate surprise. She felt no pity for him at this knowledge.

Tulushan was a soft-faced youth of too few standards for such a position of

trust. There was more to him than met the eye, of course. And less.

Waff moved to one side in the garden, leaving Odrade and Sheeana with Tulushan.

The young priest was expendable, naturally. That explained much about why he

had been chosen for this venture. It told her that she had achieved the proper

level of potential violence. Taraza did not think, though, that any of the

priestly factions would dare harm Sheeana.

We will stay close to Sheeana.

They had spent a busy week since the demonstration of the whores' sexual

accomplishments. A very disturbing week, when it came to that. Odrade had been

kept busy with Sheeana. Taraza would have preferred Lucilla for this

educational chore but you made do with what was available and Odrade obviously

was the best available on Rakis for such teaching.

Taraza looked back toward the desert. They were waiting for the 'thopters from

Keen with their cargoes of Very Important Observers. The VIOs were not yet late

but crowding it as such people always did.

Sheeana seemed to be taking the sexual education well, although Taraza's

estimation of the Sisterhood's available teaching males on Rakis was not high.

Her first night here, Taraza had called in one of the servant males. Afterward,

she had judged it too much trouble for the little joy and forgetfulness it

provided. Besides, what was there to forget? To forget was to allow a

weakness.

Never forget!

That's what the whores did, though. They traded in forgetfulness. And they had

not the least awareness of the Tyrant's continuing viselike hold on human

destiny nor of the need to break that hold.

Taraza had listened secretly to the previous day's session between Sheeana and

Odrade.

What was I listening for?

Young girl and teacher had been out here in the roof garden, facing each other

on two benches, a portable Ixian damper hiding their words from anyone who did

not have the coded translator. The suspensor-buoyed damper hovered over the two

like a strange umbrella, a black disc projecting distortions that hid the

precise movements of lips and the sounds of voices.

To Taraza, standing within the long meeting room, the tiny translator in her

left ear, the lesson had occurred like an equally distorted memory.

When I was taught these things, we had not seen what the whores of the

Scattering could do.

"Why do we say it's the complexity of sex?" Sheeana asked. "The man you sent

last night kept saying that."

"Many believe they understand it, Sheeana. Perhaps no one has ever understood

it, because such words require more of the mind than they do of the flesh."

"Why must I not use any of the things we saw the Face Dancers do?"

"Sheeana, complexity hides within complexity. Great deeds and foul ones have

been done at the goading of sexual forces. We speak of 'sexual strength' and

'sexual energies' and such things as 'the overmounting urge of desire.' I don't

deny that such things are observable. But what we are looking at here is a

force so powerful that it can destroy you and everything you hold worthwhile."

"That's what I'm trying to understand. What is it the whores are doing wrong?"

"They ignore the species at its work, Sheeana. I think you can already sense

this. The Tyrant certainly knew about it. What was his Golden Path but a

vision of sexual forces at work recreating humankind endlessly?"

"And the whores don't create?"

"They mostly try to control their worlds with this force."

"They seem to be doing that."

"Ahhh, but what counterforces do they call forth?"

"I don't understand."

"You know about Voice and how it can control some people?"

"But not control everybody."

"Exactly. A civilization subjected to Voice over a long period develops ways of

adapting to this force, preventing manipulation by those who use Voice."

"So there are people who know how to resist the whores?"

"We see unmistakable signs of it. And that is one of the reasons we are here on

Rakis."

"Will the whores come here?"

"I'm afraid so. They want to control the core of the Old Empire because they

see us as an easy conquest."

"Aren't you afraid they'll win?"

"They won't win, Sheeana. Depend on it. But they are good for us."

"How is that?"

Sheeana's tone echoed Taraza's own shock at hearing such words from Odrade. How

much did Odrade suspect? In the next instant, Taraza understood and she

wondered if the lesson was equally understandable to the young girl.

"The core is static, Sheeana. We have been almost at a standstill for thousands

of years. Life and movement are 'out there' with the people of the Scattering

who resist the whores. Whatever we do, we must make that resistance even

stronger."

The sound of approaching 'thopters broke Taraza from her reverie of remembrance.

The VIOs were arriving from Keen. Still at some distance, but the sound carried

far in the clear air.

Odrade's teaching method was a good one, Taraza had to admit as she scanned the

sky for a first glimpse of the 'thopters. Apparently they were coming in low

and from the other side of the building. That was the wrong direction but

perhaps they had taken the VIOs on a short excursion over the remains of the

Tyrant's wall. Many people were curious about the place where Odrade had found

the spice hoard.

Sheeana, Odrade, Waff, and Tulushan went back into the long meeting room. They

had heard the 'thopters, too. Sheeana was anxious to show her power over the

worms. Taraza hesitated. There was a laboring sound in the approaching

'thopters. Were they overloaded? How many observers had they brought?

The first 'thopter lifted over the penthouse roof and Taraza saw the armored

cockpit. She recognized treachery even before the first beam arced out of the

machine, slicing through her legs below the knees. She fell heavily against a

potted tree, her legs completely severed. Another beam slashed out at her,

slicing at an angle across her hip. The 'thopter swept over her in an abrupt

roar of booster jets and banked away to the left.

Taraza clung to the tree, shunting the agony aside. She managed to cut off most

of the bloodflow from her wounds but the pain was great. Not as great as the

spice agony, though, she reminded herself. That helped but she knew she was

doomed. She heard shouts and the multiple sounds of violence all around the

museum now.

I have won! Taraza thought.

Odrade darted from the penthouse and bent over Taraza. They said nothing but

Odrade showed that she understood by putting her forehead to Taraza's temple.

It was the ages-old cue of the Bene Gesserit. Taraza began pouring her life

into Odrade -- Other Memories, hopes, fears . . . everything.

One of them might yet escape.

Sheeana watched from the penthouse, staying where she had been ordered to wait.

She knew what was happening out there in the roof garden. This was the ultimate

mystery of the Bene Gesserit and every postulant was aware of it.

Waff and Tulushan, already out of the room when the attack came, did not return.

Sheeana shuddered with apprehension.

Abruptly, Odrade stood and ran back into the penthouse. There was a wild look

in her eyes but she moved with purpose. Leaping up, she gathered glowglobes,

grabbing them in bundles by their toggle cords. She thrust several bundles into

Sheeana's hands and Sheeana felt her body grow lighter with the lift of the

globes' suspensor fields. Trailing more clusters of the globes beyond their

field range, Odrade hurried across to the narrow end of the room where a grill

in the wall indicated what she sought. With Sheeana's help, she lifted the

grill out of its slots, revealing a deep airshaft. The light of the clustered

glowglobes showed rough walls inside.

"Hold the globes close to get the maximum field effect," Odrade said. "Push

them away to lower yourself. In you go."

Sheeana clutched the toggle cords in a sweaty hand and hopped over the sill.

She let herself fall, then fearfully clutched the globes close. Light from

above told her Odrade was following.

At the bottom, they emerged into a pump room, the susurrations of many fans a

background for the sounds of violence from outside.

"We must get to the no-room and then to the desert," Odrade said. "All of these

machinery systems are interconnected. There will be a passage."

"Is she dead?" Sheeana whispered.

"Yes."

"Poor Mother Superior."

"I am the Mother Superior now, Sheeana. At least temporarily." She pointed

upward. "Those were the whores attacking us. We must hurry."

The world is for the living. Who are they?

We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.

She was the wind when the wind was in my way.

Alive at noon, I perished in her form.

Who rise from the flesh to spirit know the fall:

The word outleaps the world and light is all.

-Theodore Roethke (Historical Quotations: Dar-es-Balat)

It required little conscious volition for Teg to become the whirlwind. He had

recognized at last the nature of the threat from the Honored Matres.

Recognition fitted itself into the blurred requirements made upon him by the new

Mentat awareness that went with his magnified speed.

Monstrous threat required monstrous countermeasures. Blood spattered him as he

drove himself through the headquarters building, slaughtering everyone he met.

As he had learned from his Bene Gesserit teachers, the great problem of the

human universe lay in how you managed procreation. He could hear the voice of

his first teacher as he carried destruction through the building.

"You may think of this only as sexuality but we prefer the more basic term:

procreation. It has many facets and offshoots and it has apparently unlimited

energy. The emotion called 'love' is only one small aspect. "

Teg crushed the throat of a man standing rigidly in his path and, at last, found

the control room for the building's defenses. Only one man was seated in it,

his right hand almost touching a red key on the console in front of him.

With a slashing left hand, Teg almost decapitated the man. The body tipped

backward in slow motion, blood welling from the gaping neck.

The Sisterhood is right to call them whores!

You could drag humankind almost anywhere by manipulating the enormous energies

of procreation. You could goad humans into actions they would never have

believed possible. One of his teachers had said it directly:

"This energy must have an outlet. Bottle it up and it becomes monstrously

dangerous. Redirect it and it will sweep over anything in its path. This is an

ultimate secret of all religions."

Teg was conscious of leaving more than fifty bodies behind him as he left the

building. The last fatality was a soldier in camouflage uniform standing in the

open doorway, apparently about to enter.

As he ran past apparently unmoving people and vehicles, Teg's revved-up mind had

time to reflect on what he had left behind him. Was there any consolation, he

wondered, in the fact that the old Honored Matre's last living expression was

one of real surprise? Could he congratulate himself that Muzzafar would never

again see his frame bush home?

The necessity for what he had accomplished in a few heartbeats was very clear,

though, to one trained by the Bene Gesserit. Teg knew his history. There were

many paradise planets in the Old Empire, probably many more among the people of

the Scattering. Humans always seemed capable of trying that foolish experiment.

People in such places mostly lazed along. A quick-smart analysis said this was

because of the easy climates on such planets. He knew this for stupidity. It

was because sexual energy was easily released in such places. Let the

Missionaries of the Divided God or some denominational construct enter one of

these paradises and you got outrageous violence.

"We of the Sisterhood know," one of Teg's teachers had said. "We have put a

flame to that fuse more than once with our Missionaria Protectiva."

Teg did not stop running until he was in an alley at least five kilometers from

the abattoir that had been the headquarters for the old Honored Matre. He knew

that very little time had passed but there was something much more important

upon which he had to focus. He had not killed every occupant of that building.

There were eyes back there belonging to people who knew now what he could do.

They had seen him kill Honored Matres. They had seen Muzzafar topple dead at

his hands. The evidence of the bodies left behind and the slowed replay of

recordings would tell it all.

Teg leaned against a wall. Skin was torn from his left palm. He let himself

return to normal time as he watched blood oozing from the wound. The blood was

almost black.

More oxygen in my blood?

He was panting but not as much as these exertions would seem to require.

What has happened to me?

It was something from his Atreides ancestry, he knew. Crisis had tipped him

over into another dimension of human possibilities. Whatever the

transformation, it was profound. He could see outward now into many

necessities. And the people he had passed on his run to this alley had seemed

like statues.

Will I ever think of them as muck?

It could only happen if he let it happen, he knew. But the temptation was there

and he allowed himself a brief commiseration for the Honored Matres. Great

Temptation had toppled them into their own muck.

What to do now?

The main line lay open to him. There was a man here in Ysai, one man who would

be sure to know everyone Teg required. Teg looked around the alley. Yes, that

man was near.

The fragrance of flowers and herbs wafted to Teg from somewhere down this alley.

He moved toward this fragrance, aware that it led him where he needed to go and

that no violent attack awaited him here. This was, temporarily, a quiet

backwater.

He came to the fragrant source quickly. It was an inset doorway marked by a

blue awning with two words on it in modern Galach: "Personal Service."

Teg entered and saw immediately what he had found. They were to be seen at many

places in the Old Empire: eating establishments harking back to ancient times,

eschewing automata from kitchen to table. Most of them were "in"

establishments. You told friends about your latest "discovery" with an

admonition to them not to spread the word.

"Don't want to spoil it with crowding."

This idea had always amused Teg. You spread the word about such places but you

did it under the guise of keeping a secret.

Mouth-watering odors of cooking emerged from the kitchen at the rear. A waiter

passed bearing a tray from which steam lifted, carrying the promise of good

things.

A young woman in a short black dress with a white apron came up to him. "This

way, sir. We have a table open in the corner."

She held a chair for him to be seated with his back to the wall. "Someone will

be with you in a moment, sir." She passed him a stiff sheet of cheap doublethickness

paper. "Our menu is printed. I hope you won't mind."

He watched her leave. The waiter he had seen passed going the other way toward

the kitchen. The tray was empty.

Teg's feet had led him here as though he had been running on a fixed track. And

there was the man he required, dining nearby.

The waiter had stopped to talk to the man Teg knew held the answer to the next

moves required here. The two were laughing together. Teg scanned the rest of

the room: only three other tables occupied. An older woman sat at a table in

the far corner nibbling at some frosty confection. She was dressed in what Teg

thought must be the peak of current fashion, a clinging short red gown cut low

at the neck. Her shoes matched. A young couple sat at a table off to his

right. They saw no one except each other. An older man in a tightly fitted

old-fashioned brown tunic ate sparingly of a green vegetable dish near the door.

He had eyes only for his food.

The man talking to the waiter laughed loudly.

Teg stared at the back of the waiter's head. Tufts of blond hair sprang from

the nape of the waiter's neck like broken bunches of dead grass. The man's

collar was frayed beneath the tufted hair. Teg lowered his gaze. The waiter's

shoes were run over at the heels. The hem of his black jacket had been darned.

Was it thrift in this place? Thrift or some other form of economic pressure?

The odors from the kitchen did not suggest any stinting there. The tableware

was shining and clean. No cracked dishes. But the striped red and white cloth

on the table had been darned in several places, care taken to match the original

fabric.

Once more, Teg studied the other customers. They looked substantial. None of

the starving poor in this place. Teg had it registered then. Not only was this

an "in" place, somebody had designed it for just that effect. There was a

clever mind behind such an establishment. This was the kind of restaurant that

rising young executives revealed to make points with prospective customers or to

please a superior. The food would be superb and the portions generous. Teg

realized that his instincts had led him here correctly. He bent his attention

to the menu then, allowing hunger to enter his consciousness at last. The

hunger was at least as fierce as that which had astonished the late Field

Marshal Muzzafar.

The waiter appeared beside him with a tray on which were placed a small open box

and a jar from which wafted the pungent odor of newskin ointment.

"I see you have injured your hand, Bashar," the man said. He placed the tray on

the table. "Allow me to dress the injury before you order."

Teg lifted the injured hand and watched the swift competence of the treatment.

"You know me?" Teg asked.

"Yes, sir. And after what I've been hearing, it seems strange to see you in

full uniform. There." He finished the dressing.

"What have you been hearing?" Teg spoke in a low voice.

"That the Honored Matres hunt you."

"I've just killed some of them and many of their . . . What should we call

them?"

The man paled but he spoke firmly. "Slaves would be a good word, sir."

"You were at Renditai, weren't you," Teg said.

"Yes, sir. Many of us settled here afterward."

"I need food but I cannot pay you," Teg said.

"No one from Renditai has need of your money, Bashar. Do they know you came

this way?"

"I don't believe they do."

"The people here now are regulars. None of them would betray you. I will try

to warn you if someone dangerous comes. What did you wish to eat?"

"A great deal of food. I will leave the choice to you. About twice as much

carbohydrate as protein. No stimulants."

"What do you mean by a great deal, sir?"

"Keep bringing it until I tell you to stop . . . or until you feel I have

overstepped your generosity."

"In spite of appearances, sir, this is not a poor establishment. The extras

here have made me a rich man."

Score one for his assessment, Teg thought. The thrift here was a calculated

pose.

The waiter left and again spoke to the man at the central table. Teg studied

the man openly after the waiter went on into the kitchen. Yes, that was the

man. The diner concentrated on a plate heaped with some green-garnished pasta.

There was very little sign in this man of a woman's care, Teg thought. His

collar had been closed awry, the clingstraps tangled. Spots of the greenish

sauce soiled his left cuff. He was naturally righthanded but ate while his left

hand remained in the path of spillage. Frayed cuffs on his trousers. One

trouser hem, partly released from its threaded bondage, dragged at the heel.

Stockings mismatched -- one blue and one pale yellow. None of this appeared to

bother him. No mother or other woman had ever dragged this one back from a

doorway with orders to make himself presentable. His basic attitude was

announced in his whole appearance:

"What you see is as presentable as it gets."

The man looked up suddenly, a jerking motion as though he had been goosed. He

sent a brown-eyed gaze around the room, pausing at each face in turn as though

he looked for a particular visage. This done, he returned his attention to his

plate.

The waiter returned with a clear soup in which shreds of egg and some green

vegetables could be seen.

"While the rest of your meal is being prepared, sir," he said.

"Did you come here directly after Renditai?" Teg asked.

"Yes, sir. But I served with you also at Acline."

"The sixty-seventh Gammu," Teg said.

"Yes, sir!"

"We saved a good many lives that time," Teg said. "Theirs and ours."

When Teg still did not begin eating, the waiter spoke in a rather cold voice,

"Would you require a snooper, sir?"

"Not while you're serving me," Teg said. He meant what he said but he felt a

bit of a fraud because doubled vision told him the food was safe.

The waiter started to turn away, pleased.

"One moment," Teg said.

"Sir?"

"The man at that central table. He is one of your regulars?"

"Professor Delnay? Oh, yes, sir."

"Delnay. Yes, I thought so."

"Professor of martial arts, sir. And the history of same."

"I know. When it comes time to serve my dessert, please ask Professor Delnay if

he would join me."

"Shall I tell him who you are, sir?"

"Don't you think he already knows?"

"That would seem likely, sir, but still . . ."

"Caution where caution belongs," Teg said. "Bring on the food."

Delnay's interest was fully aroused long before the waiter relayed Teg's

invitation. The professor's first words as he seated himself across from Teg

were: "That was the most remarkable gastronomic performance I have ever seen.

Are you sure you can eat a dessert?"

"Two or three of them at least," Teg said.

"Astonishing!"

Teg sampled a spoonful of a honey-sweetened confection. He swallowed it, then:

"This place is a jewel."

"I have kept it a careful secret," Delnay said. "Except for a few close

friends, of course. To what do I owe the honor of your invitation?"

"Have you ever been . . . ah, marked by an Honored Matre?"

"Lords of perdition, no! I'm not important enough for that."

"I was hoping to ask you to risk your life, Delnay."

"In what way?" No hesitation. That was reassuring.

"There is a place in Ysai where my old soldiers meet. I want to go there and

see as many of them as possible."

"Through the streets in full regalia the way you are now?"

"In any way you can arrange it."

Delnay put a finger to his lower lip and leaned back to stare at Teg. "You're

not an easy figure to disguise, you know. However, there may be a way." He

nodded thoughtfully. "Yes." He smiled. "You won't like it, I'm afraid."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Some padding and other alterations. We will pass you off as a Bordano

overseer. You'll smell of the sewer, of course. And you'll have to carry it

off that you don't notice."

"Why do you think that will succeed?" Teg asked.

"Oh, there's going to be a storm tonight. Regular thing this time of year.

Laying down the moisture for next year's open crops. And filling the reservoirs

for the heated fields, you know."

"I don't understand your reasoning, but when I've finished another of these

confections, we'll go," Teg said.

"You'll like the place where we take refuge from the storm," Delnay said. "I'm

mad, you know, to do this. But the proprietor here said I was to help you or

never come here again."

It was an hour after dark when Delnay led him to the rendezvous point. Teg,

dressed in leathers and affecting a limp, was forced to use much of his mental

power to ignore his own odors. Delnay's friends had plastered Teg with sewage

and then hosed him off. The forced-air drying brought back most of the effluent

aromas.

A remote-reading weather station at the door of the meeting place told Teg it

had dropped fifteen degrees outside in the preceding hour. Delnay preceded him

and hurried away into a crowded room where there was much noise and the sound of

clinking glassware. Teg paused to study the doorside station. The wind was

gusting to thirty klicks, he saw. Barometric pressure down. He looked at the

sign above the station:

"A service to our customers."

Presumably, a service to the bar as well. Departing customers might well take

one look at these readings and return to the warmth and camaraderie behind them.

In a large fireplace with inglenook at the far end of the bar there was a real

fire burning. Aromatic wood.

Delnay returned, wrinkled his nose at Teg's smell and led him around the edge of

the crowd into a back room, then through this into a private bathroom. Teg's

uniform -- cleaned and pressed -- was laid out over a chair there.

"I'll be in the inglenook when you come out," Delnay said.

"In full regalia, eh?" Teg asked.

"It's only dangerous out in the streets," Delnay said. He went back the way

they had come.

Teg emerged presently and found his way to the inglenook through groups that

turned suddenly silent as people recognized him. Murmurous comments swept

through the room. "The old Bashar himself." "Oh, yes, it's Teg. Served with

him, I did. Know that face and figure anywhere."

Customers had crowded into the atavistic warmth of the fireside. There was a

rich smell of wet clothing and drink-fogged breaths there.

So the storm had driven this crowd into the bar? Teg looked at the battlehardened

military faces all around him, thinking that this was not a usual

gathering, no matter what Delnay said. The people here knew one another,

though, and had expected to meet one another here at this time.

Delnay was sitting on one of the benches in the inglenook, a glass containing an

amber drink in his hand.

"You put out the word to meet us here," Teg said.

"Isn't that what you wanted, Bashar?"

"Who are you, Delnay?"

"I own a winter farm a few klicks south of here and I have some banker friends

who will occasionally loan me a groundcar. If you want me to be more specific,

I'm like the rest of the people in this room -- someone who wants the Honored

Matres off our necks."

A man behind Teg asked: "Is it true that you killed a hundred of them today,

Bashar?"

Teg spoke dryly without turning. "The number is greatly exaggerated. Could I

have a drink, please?"

From his greater height, Teg scanned the room while someone was getting him a

glass. When it was thrust into his hand, it was, as he expected, the deep blue

of Danian Marinete. These old soldiers knew his preferences.

The drinking activity in the room continued but at a more subdued pace. They

were waiting for him to state his purpose.

Gregarious human nature got a natural boost on such a stormy night, Teg thought.

Band together behind the fire in the mouth of the cave, fellow tribesmen!

Nothing dangerous will get past us, especially when the beasts see our fire.

How many other similar gatherings were there around Gammu on such a night? he

wondered, sipping his drink. Bad weather could mask movements that the gathered

companions did not want observed. The weather might also keep certain people

inside who were otherwise not supposed to remain inside.

He recognized a few faces from his past-officers and ordinary soldiers -- a

mixed bag. For some of them, he had good memories: reliable people. Some of

them would die tonight.

The noise level began to increase as people relaxed in his presence. No one

pressed him for an explanation. They knew that about him, too. Teg set his own

timetable.

The sounds of conversation and laughter were of a kind he knew must have

accompanied such gatherings since the dawn times when humans clustered for

mutual protection. Clinking of glassware, sudden bursts of laughter, a few

quiet chuckles. Those would be the ones more conscious of their personal power.

Quiet chuckles said you could be amused but you did not have to make a guffawing

fool of yourself. Delnay was a quiet chuckler.

Teg glanced up and saw that the beamed ceiling had been built conventionally

low. It made the enclosed space seem at once more extended and yet more

intimate. Careful attention to human psychology here. It was a thing he had

observed many places on this planet. It was a care to keep a damper on unwanted

awareness. Make them feel comfortable and secure. They were not, of course,

but don't let that get through to them.

For a few moments longer, Teg watched the drinks being distributed by the

skilled waiting staff: dark local beers and some expensive imports. Scattered

along the bar and on the softly illuminated tables were bowls containing crispfried

local vegetables, heavily salted. Such an obvious move to heighten thirst

apparently offended no one. It was merely expected in this trade. The beers

would be heavily salted, too, of course. They always were. Brewers knew how to

kick off the thirst response.

Some of the groups were getting louder. The drinks had begun to work their

ancient magic. Bacchus was here! Teg knew that if this gathering were allowed

to run its natural course, the room would reach a crescendo later in the night

and then gradually, very gradually, the noise level would subside. Someone

would go look at the doorside weather station. Depending on what that one saw,

the place might wind down immediately or continue at the more subdued pace for

some time. He realized then that somewhere behind the bar there would be a way

to distort the weather station's readouts. This bar would not overlook such a

way of extending its trade.

Get 'em inside and keep 'em here by any means they don't find objectionable.

The people behind this institution would fall in with the Honored Matres and not

blink an eye.

Teg put his drink aside and called out: "May I have your attention, please?"

Silence.

Even the waiting staff stopped in what they were doing.

"Some of you guard the doors," Teg said. "No one goes in or out until I give

the order. Those back doors, too, if you please."

When this had been sorted out, he stared carefully around the room, picking the

ones his doubled vision and old military experience told him could be most

trusted. What he had to do now had become quite plain to him. Burzmali,

Lucilla, and Duncan were out there at the edge of his new vision, their needs

easily seen.

"I presume you can get your hands on weapons rather quickly," he said.

"We came prepared, Bashar!" Someone out in the room shouted. Teg heard the

drink in that voice but also the old adrenaline pumping that would be so dear to

these people.

"We are going to capture a no-ship," Teg said.

That grabbed them. No other artifact of civilization was as closely guarded.

These ships came to the landing fields and other places and they left. Their

armored surfaces bristled with weapons. Crews were on constant alert in

vulnerable locations. Trickery might succeed; open assault stood little chance.

But here in this room Teg had reached a new awareness, driven by necessity and

the wild genes in his Atreides ancestry. The positions of the no-ships on and

around Gammu were visible to him. Bright dots occupied his inner vision and,

like threads leading from one bauble to another, his doubled vision saw the way

through this maze.

Oh, but I do not want to go, he thought.

The thing driving him would not be denied.

"Specifically, we are going to capture a no-ship from the Scattering," he said.

"They have some of the best. You, you and you and you." He pointed, singling

out individuals. "You will stay here and see that no one leaves or communicates

with anyone outside of this establishment. I think you will be attacked. Hold

out as long as you can. The rest of you, get your weapons and let's go."

Justice? Who asks for justice. We make our own justice. We make it here on

Arrakis -- win or die. Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms

and the freedom to use them.

-Leto I: Bene Gesserit Archives

The no-ship came in low over the Rakian sands. Its passage stirred up dusty

whirlwinds that drifted around it as it settled in a crunching disturbance of

the dunes. The silvered yellow sun was sinking into a horizon disturbed by the

heat devils of a long hot day. The no-ship sat there creaking, a glistening

steely ball whose presence could be detected by the eyes and ears but not by any

prescient or long-range instrument. Teg's doubled vision made him confident

that no unwanted eyes saw his arrival.

"I want the armored 'thopters and cars out there in no more than ten minutes,"

he said.

People stirred into action behind him.

"Are you certain they're here, Bashar?" The voice was that of a drinking

companion from the Gammu bar, a trusted officer from Renditai whose mood no

longer was that of someone recapturing the thrills of his youth. This one had

seen old friends die in the battle on Gammu. As with most of the others who

survived to come here, he had left a family whose fate he did not know. There

was a touch of bitterness in his voice, as though he were trying to convince

himself that he had been tricked into this venture.

"They will be here soon," Teg said. "They will arrive riding on the back of a

worm."

"How do you know that?"

"It was all arranged."

Teg closed his eyes. He did not need eyes to see the activity all around him.

This was like so many command posts he had occupied: an oval room of

instruments and people who operated them, officers waiting to obey.

"What is this place?" someone asked.

"Those rocks to the north of us," Teg said. "See them? They were a high cliff

once. It was called Wind Trap. There was a Fremen sietch there, little more

than a cave now. A few Rakian pioneers live in it."

"Fremen," someone whispered. "Gods! I want to see that worm coming. I never

thought I'd ever see such a thing."

"Another one of your unexpected arrangements, eh?" asked the officer of the

growing bitterness.

What would he say if I revealed my new abilities? Teg wondered. He might think

I concealed purposes that would not bear close examination. And he would be

right. That man is on the edge of a revelation. Would he remain loyal if his

eyes were opened? Teg shook his head. The officer would have little choice.

None of them had much choice except to fight and die.

It was true, Teg thought then, that the process of arranging conflicts involved

the hoodwinking of large masses. How easy it was to fall into the attitude of

the Honored Matres.

Muck!

The hoodwinking was not as difficult as some supposed. Most people wanted to be

led. That officer back there had wanted it. There were deep tribal instincts

(powerful unconscious motivations) to account for this. The natural reaction

when you began to recognize how easily you were led was to look for scapegoats.

That officer back there wanted a scapegoat now.

"Burzmali wants to see you," someone off to Teg's left said.

"Not now," Teg said.

Burzmali could wait. He would have his day of command soon enough. Meanwhile,

he was a distraction. There would be time later for him to skirt dangerously

near the role of scapegoat.

How easy it was to produce scapegoats and how readily they were accepted! This

was especially true when the alternative was to find yourself either guilty or

stupid or both. Teg wanted to say for all of those around him:

"Look to the hoodwinking! Then you'll know our true intentions!"

The communications officer on Teg's left said: "That Reverend Mother is with

Burzmali now. She insists they be allowed in to see you."

"Tell Burzmali I want him to go back and stay with Duncan," Teg said. "And have

him look in on Murbella, make sure she's secured. Lucilla can come in."

It had to be, Teg thought.

Lucilla was increasingly suspicious about the changes in him. Trust a Reverend

Mother to see the difference.

Lucilla swept in, her robes swishing to accent her vehemence. She was angry but

concealing it well.

"I demand an explanation, Miles!"

That was a good opening line, he thought. "Of what?" he said.

"Why didn't we just go in at the --"

"Because the Honored Matres and their Tleilaxu companions from the Scattering

hold most of the Rakian centers."

"How . . . how do you . . ."

"They've killed Taraza, you know," he said.

That stopped her, but not for long. "Miles, I insist that you tell me --"

"We don't have much time," he said. "The next satellite passage will show us on

the surface here."

"But the defenses of Rakis --"

"Are as vulnerable as any other defenses when they become static," he said.

"The families of the defenders are down here. Take the families and you have

effective control of the defenders."

"But why are we out here in --"

"To pick up Odrade and that girl with her. Oh, and their worm, too."

"What will we do with a --"

"Odrade will know what to do with the worm. She's your Mother Superior now, you

know."

"So you're going to whisk us off into --"

"You'll whisk yourselves! My people and I will remain to create a diversion."

That brought a shocked silence throughout the command station.

Diversion, Teg thought. What an inadequate word.

The resistance he had in mind would create hysteria among the Honored Matres,

especially when they were made to believe the ghola was here. Not only would

they counterattack, they eventually would resort to sterilization procedures.

Most of Rakis would become a charred ruin. There was little likelihood that any

humans, worms, or sandtrout would survive.

"The Honored Matres have been trying to locate and capture a worm without

success," he said. "I really don't understand how they could be so blind in

their concept of how you transplant one of them."

"Transplant?" Lucilla was floundering. Teg had seldom seen a Reverend Mother

at such a loss. She was trying to assemble the things he had said. The

Sisterhood had some of the Mentats' capabilities, he had observed. A Mentat

could come to a qualified conviction without sufficient data. He thought that

he would be long out of her reach (or the reach of any other Reverend Mother)

before she assembled this data. Then there would be a scrambling for his

offspring! They would pick up Dimela for their Breeding Mistresses, of course.

And Odrade. She would not escape.

They had the key to the Tleilaxu axlotl tanks, too. It would be only a matter

of time now until the Bene Gesserit overcame its scruples and mastered that

source of the spice. A human body produced it!

"We're in danger here, then," Lucilla said.

"Some danger, yes. The trouble with the Honored Matres is that they're too

wealthy. They make the mistakes of the wealthy."

"Depraved whores!" she said.

"I suggest you get to the entry port," he said. "Odrade will be here soon."

She left him without another word.

"Armor is all out and deployed," the communications officer said.

"Alert Burzmali to be ready for command here," Teg said. "The rest of us will

be going out soon."

"You expect all of us to join you?" That was the one who looked for a

scapegoat.

"I am going out," Teg said. "I will go alone if necessary. Only those who wish

need join me."

After that, all of them would come, he thought. Peer pressure was little

understood by anyone except those trained by the Bene Gesserit.

It grew silent in the command station except for the faint hummings and clicks

of instruments. Teg fell to thinking about the "depraved whores."

It was not correct to call them depraved, he thought. Sometimes, the supremely

rich did become depraved. That came from believing that money (power) could buy

anything and everything. And why shouldn't they believe this? They saw it

happening every day. It was easy to believe in absolutes.

Hope springs eternal and all of that gornaw!

It was like another faith. Money would buy the impossible.

Then came depravity.

It was not the same for the Honored Matres. They were, somehow, beyond

depravity. They had come through it; he could see that. But now they were into

something else so far beyond depravity that Teg wondered if he really wanted to

know about it.

The knowledge was there, though, inescapable in his new awareness. Not one of

those people would hesitate an instant before consigning an entire planet to

torture if that meant personal gain. Or if the payoff were some imagined

pleasure. Or if the torture produced even a few more days or hours of living.

What pleased them? What gratified? They were like semuta addicts. Whatever

simulated pleasure for them, they required more of it every time.

And they know this!

How they must rage inside! Caught in such a trap! They had seen it all and

none of it was enough -- not good enough nor evil enough. They had entirely

lost the knack of moderation.

They were dangerous, though. And perhaps he was wrong about one thing: Perhaps

they no longer remembered what it had been like before the awful transformation

of that strange tart-smelling stimulant that painted orange in their eyes.

Memories of memories could become distorted. Every Mentat was sensitized to

this flaw in himself.

"There's the worm!"

It was the communications officer.

Teg swiveled in his chair and looked at the projection, a miniature holo of the

exterior to the southwest. The worm with its two tiny dots of human passengers

was a distant sliver of wriggling movement.

"Bring Odrade in here alone when they arrive," he said. "Sheeana -- that's the

young girl -- will remain behind to help herd that worm into the hold. It will

obey her. Be sure Burzmali is standing ready nearby. We won't have much time

for the transfer of command."

When Odrade entered the command station she was still breathing hard and exuding

the smells of the desert, a compound of melange, flint, and human perspiration.

Teg sat in his chair apparently resting. His eyes remained closed.

Odrade thought she had caught the Bashar in an uncharacteristic attitude of

repose, almost pensive. He opened his eyes then and she saw the change about

which Lucilla had only been able to blurt a small warning -- along with a few

hasty words about the ghola's transformation. What was it that had happened to

Teg? He was almost posing for her, daring her to see it in him. The chin was

firm and held slightly upthrust in his normal attitude of observation. The

narrow face with its webwork of age lines had lost none of its alertness. The

long, thin nose so characteristic of the Corrinos and Atreides in his ancestry

had grown a bit longer with advancing years. But the gray hair remained thick

and that small peak at the forehead centered the observing gaze . . .

On his eyes!

"How did you know to meet us here?" Odrade demanded. "We had no idea where the

worm was taking us."

"There are very few inhabited places here in the meridian desert," he said.

"Gambler's choice. This seemed likely."

Gambler's choice? She knew the Mentat phrase but had never understood it.

Teg lifted himself from his chair. "Take this ship and go to the place you know

best," he said.

Chapter House? She almost said it but thought of the others around her, these

military strangers Teg had assembled. Who were they? Lucilla's brief

explanation did not satisfy.

"We change Taraza's design somewhat," Teg said. "The ghola does not stay. He

must go with you."

She understood. They would need Duncan Idaho's new talents to counter the

whores. He was no longer merely bait for the destruction of Rakis.

"He will not be able to leave the no-ship's concealment, of course," Teg said.

She nodded. Duncan was not shielded from prescient searchers . . . such as the

Guild navigators.

"Bashar!" It was the communications officer. "We've been bleeped by a

satellite!"

"All right, you ground hogs!" Teg shouted. "Everybody outside! Get Burzmali

in here."

A hatch at the rear of the station flew open. Burzmali lunged through.

"Bashar, what are we --"

"No time! Take over!" Teg lifted himself from his command chair and waved for

Burzmali to take it. "Odrade here will tell you where to go." On an impulse

that he knew was partly vindictive, Teg grasped Odrade's left arm, leaned close,

and kissed her cheek. "Do what you must, daughter," he whispered. "That worm

in the hold may soon be the only one in the universe."

Odrade saw it then: Teg knew Taraza's complete design and intended to carry out

his Mother Superior's orders to the very end.

"Do what you must." That said it all.

We are not looking at a new state of matter but at a newly recognized

relationship between consciousness and matter, which provides a more penetrating

insight into the workings of prescience. The oracle shapes a projected inner

universe to produce new external probabilities out of forces that are not

understood. There is no need to understand these forces before using them to

shape the physical universe. Ancient metal workers had no need to understand

the molecular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper,

gold, and tin. They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they

continued to operate their forges and wield their hammers.

-Mother Superior Taraza, Argument in Council

The ancient structure in which the Sisterhood secreted its Chapter House, its

Archives, and the offices of its most sacrosanct leadership did not just make

sounds in the night. The noises were more like signals. Odrade had learned to

read those signals over her many years here. That particular sound there, that

strained creaking was a wooden beam in the floor not replaced in some eight

hundred years. It contracted in the night to produce those sounds.

She had Taraza's memories to expand on such signals. The memories were not

fully integrated; there had been very little time. Here at night in Taraza's

old working room, Odrade used a few available moments to continue the

integration.

Dar and Tar, one at last.

That was a quite identifiable Taraza comment.

To haunt the Other Memories was to exist on several planes simultaneously, some

of them very deep, but Taraza remained near the surface. Odrade allowed herself

to sink farther into the multiple existences. Presently, she recognized a self

who was currently breathing but remote while others demanded that she plunge

into the all-enfolding visions, everything complete with smells, touches,

emotions -- all of the originals held intact within her own awareness.

It is unsettling to dream another's dreams.

Taraza again.

Taraza who had played such a dangerous game with the future of the entire

Sisterhood hanging in the balance! How carefully she had timed the leaking of

word to the whores that the Tleilaxu had built dangerous abilities into the

ghola. And the attack on the Gammu Keep confirmed that the information had

reached its source. The brutal nature of that attack, though, had warned Taraza

that she had little time. The whores would be sure to assemble forces for the

total destruction of Gammu -- just to kill that one ghola.

So much had depended on Teg.

She saw the Bashar there in her own assemblage of Other Memories: the father

she had never really known.

I didn't know him at the end, either.

It could be weakening to dig into those memories, but she could not escape the

demands of that luring reservoir.

Odrade thought of the Tyrant's words: "The terrible field of my past! Answers

leap up like a frightened flock blackening the sky of my inescapable memories."

Odrade held herself like a swimmer balanced just below the water's surface.

I most likely will be replaced, Odrade thought. I may even be reviled.

Bellonda certainly was not giving easy agreement to the new state of command.

No matter. Survival of the Sisterhood was all that should concern any of them.

Odrade floated up out of the Other Memories and lifted her gaze to look across

the room into the shadowy niche where the bust of a woman could be discerned in

the low light of the room's glowglobes. The bust remained a vague shape in its

shadows but Odrade knew that face well: Chenoeh, guardian symbol of Chapter

House.

"There but for the grace of God . . ."

Every sister who came through the spice agony (as Chenoeh had not) said or

thought that same thing, but what did it really mean? Careful breeding and

careful training produced the successful ones in sufficient numbers. Where was

the hand of God in that? God certainly was not the worm they had brought from

Rakis. Was the presence of God felt only in the successes of the Sisterhood?

I fall prey to the pretensions of my own Missionaria Protectiva!

She knew that these were similar to thoughts and questions that had been heard

in this room on countless occasions. Bootless! Still, she could not bring

herself to remove that guardian bust from the niche where it had reposed for so

long.

I am not superstitious, she told herself. I am not a compulsive person. This

is a matter of tradition. Such things have a value well known to us.

Certainly, no bust of me will ever be so honored.

She thought of Waff and his Face Dancers dead with Miles Teg in the terrible

destruction of Rakis. It did not do to dwell on the bloody attrition being

suffered in the Old Empire. Better to think about the muscles of retribution

being created by the blundering violence of the Honored Matres.

Teg knew!

The recently concluded Council session had subsided in fatigue without firm

conclusions. Odrade counted herself lucky to have diverted attention into a few

immediate concerns dear to them all.

The punishments: Those had occupied them for a time. Historical precedents

fleshed out the Archival analyses to a satisfying form. Those assemblages of

humans who allied themselves with the Honored Matres were in for some shocks.

Ix would certainly overextend itself. They had not the slightest appreciation

of how competition from the Scattering would crush them.

The Guild would be shunted aside and made to pay dearly for its melange and its

machinery. Guild and Ix, thrown together, would fall together.

The Fish Speakers could be mostly ignored. Satellites of Ix, they were already

fading into a past that humans would abandon.

And the Bene Tleilax. Ah, yes, the Tleilaxu. Waff had succumbed to the Honored

Mattes. He had never admitted it but the truth was plain. "Just once and with

one of my own Face Dancers."

Odrade smiled grimly, remembering her father's bitter kiss.

I will have another niche made, she thought. I will commission another bust:

Miles Teg, the Great Heretic!

Lucilla's suspicions about Teg were disquieting, though. Had he been prescient

at last and able to see the no-ships? Well, the Breeding Mistresses could

explore those suspicions.

"We have laagered up!" Bellonda accused.

They all knew the meaning of that word: they had retreated into a fortress

position for the long night of the whores.

Odrade realized she did not much care for Bellonda, the way she laughed

occasionally to expose those wide, blunt teeth.

They had discussed the cell samples from Sheeana for a long time. The "proof of

Siona" was there. She had the ancestry that shielded her from prescience and

could leave the no-ship.

Duncan was an unknown.

Odrade turned her thoughts to the ghola out there in the grounded no-ship.

Lifting herself from the chair, she crossed to the dark window and looked in the

direction of the distant landing field.

Did they dare risk releasing Duncan from the shielding of that ship? The cell

studies said he was a mixture of many Idaho gholas -- some descendant of Siona.

But what of the taint from the original?

No. He must remain confined.

And what of Murbella? -- pregnant Murbella? An Honored Matre dishonored.

"The Tleilaxu intended for me to kill the Imprinter," Duncan said.

"Will you try to kill the whore?" That was Lucilla's question.

"She is not an Imprinter," Duncan said.

The Council had discussed at length the possible nature of the bonding between

Duncan and Murbella. Lucilla maintained there was no bonding at all, that the

two remained wary opponents.

"Best not to risk putting them together."

The sexual prowess of the whores would have to be studied at length, though.

Perhaps a meeting between Duncan and Murbella in the no-ship could be risked.

With careful protective measures, of course.

Lastly, she thought about the worm in the no-ship's hold -- a worm nearing the

moment of its metamorphosis. A small earth-dammed basin filled with melange

awaited that worm. When the moment came, it would be lured out by Sheeana into

the bath of melange and water. The resulting sandtrout could then begin their

long transformation.

You were right, father. It was so simple when you looked at it clearly.

No need to seek a desert planet for the worms. The sandtrout would create their

own habitat for Shai-hulud. It was not pleasant to think of Chapter House

Planet transformed into vast areas of wasteland but it had to be done.

The "Last Will and Testament of Miles Teg," which he had planted in the noship's

submolecular storage systems, could not be discredited. Even Bellonda

agreed to that.

Chapter House required a complete revision of all its historical records. A new

look had been demanded of them by what Teg had seen of the Lost Ones -- the

whores from the Scattering.

"You seldom learn the names of the truly wealthy and powerful. You see only

their spokesmen. The political arena makes a few exceptions to this but does

not reveal the full power structure."

The Mentat philosopher had chewed deep into everything they accepted and what he

disgorged did not agree with Archival dependence upon "our inviolate

summations."

We knew it, Miles, we just never faced up to it. We're all going to be digging

in our Other Memories for the next few generations.

Fixed data, storage systems could not be trusted.

"If you destroy most copies, time will take care of the rest."

How Archives had raged at that telling pronouncement by the Bashar!

"The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical

accounts divert attention from the secret influences around the recorded

events."

That was the one that had brought down Bellonda. She had taken it up on her

own, admitting: "The few histories that escape this restrictive process vanish

into obscurity through obvious processes."

Teg had listed some of the processes: "Destruction of as many copies as

possible, burying the too revealing accounts in ridicule, ignoring them in the

centers of education, insuring that they are not quoted elsewhere and, in some

cases, elimination of the authors."

Not to mention the scapegoat process that brought death to more than one

messenger bearing unwelcome news, Odrade thought. She recalled an ancient ruler

who kept a pikestaff handy with which to kill messengers who brought bad news.

"We have a, good base of information upon which to build a better understanding

of our past," Odrade had argued. "We've always known that what was at stake in

conflicts was the determination of who would control the wealth or its

equivalent."

Maybe it was not a real "noble purpose" but it would do for the time being.

I am avoiding the central issue, she thought.

Something would have to be done about Duncan Idaho and they all knew it.

With a sigh, Odrade summoned a 'thopter and prepared herself for the short trip

to the no-ship.

Duncan's prison was at least comfortable, Odrade thought when she entered it.

This had been the ship commander's quarters lately occupied by Miles Teg. There

were still signs of his presence here -- a small holostat projector revealing a

scene of his home on Lernaeus; the stately old house, the long lawn, the river.

Teg had left a sewing kit behind on a bedside table.

The ghola sat in a sling chair staring at the projection. He looked up

listlessly when Odrade entered.

"You just left him back there to die, didn't you?" Duncan asked.

"We do what we must," she said. "And I obeyed his orders."

"I know why you're here," Duncan said. "And you're not going to change my mind.

I'm not a damned stud for the witches. You understand me?"

Odrade smoothed her robe and sat on the edge of the bed facing Duncan. "Have

you examined the record my father left for us?" she asked.

"Your father?"

"Miles Teg was my father. I commend his last words to you. He was our eyes

there at the end. He had to see the death on Rakis. The 'mind at its

beginning' understood dependencies and key logs."

When Duncan looked puzzled, she explained: "We were trapped too long in the

Tyrant's oracular maze."

She saw how he sat up more alertly, the feline movements that spoke of muscles

well conditioned to attack.

"There is no way you can escape alive from this ship," she said. "You know

why."

"Siona."

"You are a danger to us but we would prefer that you lived a useful life."

"I'm still not going to breed for you, especially not with that little twit from

Rakis."

Odrade smiled, wondering how Sheeana would respond to that description.

"You think it's funny?" Duncan demanded.

"Not really. But we'll still have Murbella's child, of course. I guess that

will have to satisfy us."

"I've been talking to Murbella on the com," Duncan said. "She thinks she's

going to be a Reverend Mother, that you're going to accept her into the Bene

Gesserit."

"Why not? Her cells pass the proof of Siona. I think she will make a superb

Sister."

"Has she really taken you in?"

"You mean, have we failed to observe that she thinks she will go along with us

until she learns our secrets and then she will escape? Oh, we know that,

Duncan."

"You don't think she can get away from you?"

"Once we get them, Duncan, we never really lose them."

"You don't think you lost the Lady Jessica?"

"She came back to us in the end."

"Why did you really come out here to see me?"

"I thought you deserved an explanation of the Mother Superior's design. It was

aimed at the destruction of Rakis, you see. What she really wanted was the

elimination of almost all of the worms."

"Great Gods below! Why?"

"They were an oracular force holding us in bondage. Those pearls of the

Tyrant's awareness magnified that hold. He didn't predict events, he created

them."

Duncan pointed toward the rear of the ship. "But what about . . ."

"That one? It's just one now. By the time it reaches sufficient numbers to be

an influence once more, humankind will have gone its own way beyond him. We'll

be too numerous by then, doing too many different things on our own. No single

force will rule all of our futures completely, never again."

She stood.

When he did not respond, she said: "Within the imposed limits, which I know you

appreciate, please think about the kind of life you want to lead. I promise to

help you in any way I can."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because my ancestors loved you. Because my father loved you."

"Love? You witches can't feel love!"

She stared down at him for almost a minute. The bleached hair was growing out

dark at the roots and curling once more into ringlets, especially at his neck,

she saw.

"I feel what I feel," she said. "And your water is ours, Duncan Idaho."

She saw the Fremen admonition have its effect on him and then turned away and

was passed out of the room by the guards.

Before leaving the ship, she went back to the hold and stared down at the

quiescent worm on its bed of Rakian sand. Her viewport looked down from some

two hundred meters onto the captive. As she looked, she shared a silent laugh

with the increasingly integrated Taraza.

We were right and Schwangyu and her people were wrong. We knew he wanted out.

He had to want that after what he did.

She spoke aloud in a soft whisper, as much for herself as for the nearby

observers stationed there to watch for the moment when metamorphosis began in

that worm.

"We have your language now," she said.

There were no words in the language, only a moving, dancing adaptation to a

moving, dancing universe. You could only speak the language, not translate it.

To know the meaning you had to go through the experience and even then the

meaning changed before your eyes. "Noble purpose" was, after all, an

untranslatable experience. But when she looked down at the rough, heat-immune

hide of that worm from the Rakian desert, Odrade knew what she saw: the visible

evidence of noble purpose.

Softly, she called down to him: "Hey! Old worm! Was this your design?"

There was no answer but then she had not really expected an answer.

Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington, and educated at the University of

Washington, Seattle. He worked a wide variety of jobs -- including TV

cameraman, radio commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay

analyst, creative writing teacher, reporter and editor of several West Coast

newspapers -- before becoming a full-time writer.

In 1952, Herbert began publishing science fiction with "Looking for Something?"

in Startling Stories. But his true emergence as a writer of major stature did

not occur until 1965, with the publication of Dune. Dune Messiah, Children of

Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune followed,

completing the saga that the Chicago Tribune would call "one of the monuments of

modern science fiction." Herbert is also the author of some twenty other books,

including The Jesus Incident, The Dosadi Experiment, and Destination: Void. He

died in 1986.