"I've told you the rule." And Odrade could see the reaction clearly on
Murbella's face: "There it is! They will demand that I give up Duncan!"
"So there's no love among the Bene Gesserit." How sad her tone. There was hope
for Murbella yet.
"Loves occur, " Odrade said, "but my Sisters treat them as aberrations."
"So what I feel for Duncan is aberration?"
"And Sisters will try to treat it."
"Treat! Apply correctional therapy to the afflicted!"
"Love is considered a sign of rot in Sisters."
"I see signs of rot in you!"
As though she followed Odrade's thoughts, Bellonda dragged Odrade out of
reverie. "That Honored Matre will never commit herself to us!" Bellonda wiped
a bit of luncheon gravy from the corner of her mouth. "We're wasting our time
trying to teach her our ways.'
At least Bell was no longer calling Murbella "whore," Odrade thought. That was
an improvement.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological
personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the
corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a
condition to which they are quickly addicted.
-Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
Rebecca knelt on the yellow tile floor as she had been ordered to do, not daring
to look up at Great Honored Matre seated so remotely high, so dangerous. Two
hours Rebecca had waited here almost in the center of a giant room while Great
Honored Matre and her companions ate a lunch served by obsequious attendants.
Rebecca marked the manners of the attendants with care and emulated them.
Her eye sockets still ached from transplants the Rabbi had given her less than a
month ago. These eyes showed a blue iris and white sclera, no clue to the Spice
Agony in her past. It was a temporary defense. In less than a year, the new
eyes would betray her with total blue.
She judged the ache in her eyes to be the least of her problems. An organic
implant fed her metered doses of melange, concealing her dependence. The supply
was gauged to last about sixty days. If these Honored Matres held her longer
than that, withdrawal would plunge her into an agony that would make the
original appear mild by comparison. The most immediately dangerous thing was
the shere being metered to her with the spice. If these women detected it, they
certainly would be suspicious.
You are doing well. Be patient. That was Other Memory from the horde of
Lampadas. The voice rang softly in her head. It had the sound of Lucilla but
Rebecca could not be sure.
It had become a familiar voice in the months since the Sharing when it had
announced itself as "Speaker of your Mohalata." These whores cannot match our
knowledge. Remember that and let it give you courage.
The presence of Others Within who subtracted none of her attention from what
went on around her had filled her with awe. We call it Simulflow, Speaker had
said. Simulflow multiplies your awareness. When she had tried to explain this
to the Rabbi, he had reacted in anger.
"You have been tainted by unclean thoughts!"
They had been in the Rabbi's study late at night. "Stealing time from the days
allotted us," he called it. The study was an underground room, its walls lined
with old books, ridulian crystals, scrolls. The room was protected from probes
by the best Ixian devices and they had been modified by his own people to
improve them.
She was allowed to sit beside his desk at such times while he leaned back in an
old chair. A glowglobe placed low beside him cast an antique yellow light on
his bearded face, glinting off the spectacles he wore almost as badge of office.
Rebecca pretended confusion. "But you said it was required of us to save this
treasure from Lampadas. Have the Bene Gesserit not been honorable with us?"
She saw the worry in his eyes. "You heard Levi talking yesterday of the
questions being asked here. Why did the Bene Gesserit witch come to us? That
is what they ask."
"Our story is consistent and believable," Rebecca protested. "The Sisters have
taught us ways that even Truthsay cannot penetrate."
"I don't know . . . I don't know." The Rabbi shook his head sadly. "What is a
lie? What is truth? Do we condemn ourselves with our own mouths?"
"It is pogrom that we resist, Rabbi!" That usually stiffened his resolve.
"Cossacks! Yes, you are right, daughter. There have been Cossacks in every age
and we are not the only ones who have felt their knouts and swords as they rode
into the village with murder in their hearts."
It was odd, Rebecca thought, how he managed to give the impression that these
events were of recent occurrence and that his eyes had seen them. Never to
forgive, never to forget. Lidiche was yesterday. What a powerful thing that
was in the memory of Secret Israel. Pogrom! Almost as powerful in its
continuity as these Bene Gesserit presences she carried in her awareness.
Almost. That was the thing the Rabbi resisted, she told herself.
"I fear that you have been taken from us," the Rabbi said. "What have I done to
you? What have I done? And all in the name of honor."
He looked at the instruments on his study wall that reported the nightly power
accumulations from the vertical-axis windmills placed around the farmstead. The
instruments said the machines were humming away up there, storing energy for the
morrow. That was a gift of the Bene Gesserit: freedom from Ix. Independence.
What a peculiar word.
Without looking at Rebecca, he said: " I find this thing of Other Memory very
difficult and always have. Memory should bring wisdom but it does not. It is
how we order the memory and where we apply our knowledge."
He turned and looked at her, his face falling into shadows. "What is it this
one inside you says? This one you think of as Lucilla?"
Rebecca could see it pleased him to say Lucilla's name. If Lucilla could speak
through a daughter of Secret Israel, then she still lived and had not been
betrayed.
Rebecca lowered her gaze as she spoke. "She says we have these inner images,
sounds and sensations that come at command or intrude under necessity."
"Necessity, yes! And what is that except reports of senses from flesh that may
have been where you should not have been and done offensive things?"
Other bodies, other memories, Rebecca thought. Having experienced this she knew
she could never willingly abandon it. Perhaps I have indeed become Bene
Gesserit. That is what he fears, of course.
"I will tell you a thing," the Rabbi said. "This 'crucial intersection of
living awareness,' as they call it, that is nothing unless you know how your own
decisions go out from you like threads into the lives of others."
"To see our own actions in the reactions of others, yes, that is how the Sisters
view it."
"That is wisdom. What is it the lady says they seek?"
"Influence on the maturing of humankind."
"Mmmmmm. And she finds that events are not beyond her influence, merely beyond
her senses. That is almost wise. But maturity . . . ahhh, Rebecca. Do we
interfere with a higher plan? Is it the right of humans to set limits on the
nature of Yaweh? I think Leto II understood that. This lady in you denies it."
"She says he was a damnable tyrant."
"He was but there have been wise tyrants before him and doubtless will be more
after us."
"They call him Shaitan."
"He had Satan's own powers. I share their fear of that. He was not so much
prescient as he was a cement. He fixed the shape of what he saw."
"That is what the lady says. But she says it is their grail that he preserved."
"Again, they are almost wise."
A great sigh shook the Rabbi and once more he looked to the instruments on his
wall. Energy for the morrow.
He returned his attention to Rebecca. She was changed. He could not avoid
awareness of it. She had become very like the Bene Gesserit. It was
understandable. Her mind was filled with all of those people from Lampadas.
But they were not Gadarene swine to be driven into the sea and their diabolism
with them. And I am not another Jesus.
"This thing they tell you about the Mother Superior Odrade -- that she often
damns her own Archivists and the Archives with them. What a thing! Are not
Archives like the books in which we preserve our wisdom?"
"Then am I an Archivist, Rabbi?"
Her question confounded him but it also illuminated the problem. He smiled. "
I tell you something, daughter. I admit to a little sympathy with this Odrade.
There is always something grumbling about Archivists."
"Is that wisdom, Rabbi?" How slyly she asked it!
"Believe me, daughter, it is. How carefully the Archivist suppresses even the
smallest hint of judgment. One word after another. Such arrogance!"
"How do they judge which words to use, Rabbi?"
"Ahhh, a bit of wisdom comes to you, daughter. But these Bene Gesserit have not
achieved wisdom and it is their grail that prevents it."
She could see it on his face. He tries to arm me with doubts about these lives
I carry.
"Let me tell you a thing about the Bene Gesserit," he said. Nothing came into
his mind then. No words, no sage advice. This had not happened to him for
years. There was only one course open to him: speak from the heart.
"Perhaps they have been too long on the road to Damascus without a blinding
flash of illumination, Rebecca. I hear them say they act for the benefit of
humankind. Somehow, I cannot see this in them, nor do I believe the Tyrant saw
it."
When Rebecca started to reply, he stopped her with an upraised hand. "Mature
humanity? That is their grail? Is it not the mature fruit that is plucked and
eaten?"
On the floor of junction's Great Hall, Rebecca remembered these words, seeing
the personification of them not in the lives she preserved but in the actions of
her captors.
Great Honored Matre had finished eating. She wiped her hands on the gown of an
attendant.
"Let her approach," Great Honored Matre said.
Pain lanced Rebecca's left shoulder and she lurched forward on her knees. The
one called Logno had come up behind with the stealth of a hunter and had jabbed
a shuntgoad into the captive's flesh.
Laughter echoed through the room.
Rebecca staggered to her feet and, staying just ahead of the goad, arrived at
the foot of the steps leading up to the Great Honored Matre where the goad
stopped her.
"Down!" Logno emphasized the command with another jab.
Rebecca sank to her knees and stared straight ahead at the risers of the steps.
The yellow tiles displayed tiny scratches. Somehow, these flaws reassured her.
Great Honored Matre said: "Let her be, Logno. I wish answers, not screams."
Then to Rebecca: "Look at me, woman!"
Rebecca raised her eyes and stared up at the face of death. What an
unremarkable face it was to have that threat in it. So . . . so evenly
featured. Almost plain. Such a small figure. This amplified the peril Rebecca
sensed. What powers the small woman must have to rule these terrible people.
"Do you know why you are here?" Great Honored Matre demanded.
In her most obsequious tones, Rebecca said: " I was told, O Great Honored
Matre, that you wished me to recount the lore of Truthsay and other matters of
Gammu."
"You were mated to a Truthsayer!" It was accusation.
"He is dead, Great Honored Matre."
"No, Logno!" This was directed at the aide who lunged forward with the goad.
"This wretch does not know our ways. Now, go stand at the side, Logno, where I
will not be annoyed by your impetuosity.
"You will speak to me only in response to questions or when I command it,
wretch!" Great Honored Matre shouted.
Rebecca cringed.
Speaker whispered in Rebecca's head: That was almost Voice. Be warned.
"Have you ever known any of the ones who call themselves Bene Gesserit?" Great
Honored Matre asked.
Really now! "Everyone has encountered the witches, Great Honored Matre."
"What do you know of them?"
So this is why they brought me here.
"Only what I have heard, Great Honored Matre."
"Are they brave?"
"It is said they always try to avoid risks, Great Honored Matre."
You are worthy of us, Rebecca. That is the pattern of these whores. The marble
rolls down the incline in its proper channel. They think you dislike us.
"Are these Bene Gesserit rich?" Great Honored Matre asked.
" I think the witches are poor beside you, Honored Matre," Rebecca said.
"Why do you say that? Do not speak just to please me!"
"But Honored Matre, could the witches send a great ship from Gammu to here just
to carry me? And where are the witches now? They hide from you."
"Yes, where are they?" Honored Matre demanded.
Rebecca shrugged.
"Were you on Gammu when the one they called Bashar fled us?" Honored Matre
asked.
She knows you were. "I was there, Great Honored Matre, and heard the stories.
I do not believe them."
"Believe what we tell you to believe, wretch! What are the stories you heard?"
"That he moved with a speed the eye could not see. That he killed many . . .
people with only his hands. That he stole a no-ship and fled into the
Scattering."
"Believe that he fled, wretch." See how she fears! She cannot hide the
trembling.
"Speak of the Truthsay," Great Honored Matre commanded.
"Great Honored Matre, I do not understand the Truthsay. I know only the words
of my Sholem, my husband. I can repeat his words if you wish."
Great Honored Matre considered this, glancing from side to side at her aides and
councillors, who were beginning to show signs of boredom. Why doesn't she just
kill this wretch?
Rebecca, seeing the violence in eyes that glared orange at her, shrank into
herself. She thought of her husband by his love-name, Shoel, now, and his words
comforted. He had shown the "proper talent" while still a child. Some called
it an instinct but Shoel had never used that word. "Trust your gut feelings.
That's what my teachers always said."
It was such a down-to-earth expression that he said it usually threw off the
ones who came seeking "the esoteric mystery."
"There is no secret," Shoel had said. "It's training and hard work like
anything else. You exercise what they call 'petit perception,' the ability to
detect very small variations in human reactions.'
Rebecca could see such small reactions in those who stared down at her. They
want me dead. Why?
Speaker had advice. The great one likes to show off her power over the others.
She does not do what others want but what she thinks they do not want.
"Great Honored Matre," Rebecca ventured, "you are so rich and powerful. Surely
you must have a place of menial employment where I may be of service to you."
"You wish to enter my service?" What a feral grin!
"It would make me happy, Great Honored Matre."
"I am not here to make you happy."
Logno took a step forward onto the floor. "Then make us happy, Dama. Let us
have some sport with --"
"Silence!" Ahhh, that was a mistake, calling her by the intimate name here
among the others.
Logno drew back and almost dropped the goad.
Great Honored Matre stared down at Rebecca with an orange glare. "You will go
back to your miserable existence on Gammu, wretch. I will not kill you. That
would be a mercy. Having seen what we could give you, live your life without
it."
"Great Honored Matre!" Logno protested. "We have suspicions about --"
"I have suspicions about you, Logno. Send her back and alive! Hear me? Do you
think us incapable of finding her if we ever have need of her?"
"No, Great Honored Matre."
"We are watching you, wretch," Great Honored Matre said.
Bait! She thinks of you as something to capture larger game. How interesting.
This one has a head and uses it in spite of her violent nature. So that's how
she came to power.
All the way back to Gammu, confined to stinking quarters in a ship that had once
served the Guild, Rebecca considered her predicament. Surely, those whores had
not expected her to mistake their intent. But . . . perhaps they did.
Subservience, cringing. They revel in such things.
She knew this came from a bit of her Shoel's Truthsay as much as from the
Lampadas advisors.
"You accumulate a lot of small observations, sensed but never brought to
consciousness, Shoel had said. "Cumulatively, they say things to you but not in
a language anyone speaks. Language isn't necessary."
She had thought this one of the oddest things she had ever heard. But that was
before her own Agony. In bed at night, comforted by darkness and the touch of
loving flesh, they had acted wordlessly but had shared words, too.
"Language obstructs you," Shoel had said. "What you do is learn to read your
own reactions. Sometimes, you can find words to describe this . . . sometimes .
. . not."
"No words? Not even for the questions?"
"Words you want, is it? How are these? Trust. Belief. Truth. Honesty."
"Those are good words, Shoel."
"But they miss the mark. Don't depend on them."
"Then what do you depend on?"
"My own internal reactions. I read myself, not the person in front of me. I
always know a lie because I want to turn my back on the liar."
"So that's how you do it!" Pounding his bare arm.
"Others do it differently. One person I heard say she knew a lie because she
wanted to put her arm through the liar's arm and walk a ways, comforting the
liar. You may think that's nonsense, but it works."
"I think it's very wise, Shoel." Love speaking. She did not really know what
he meant.
"My precious love," he said, cradling her head on his arm, "Truthsayers have a
Truthsense that, once awakened, works all the time. Please don't tell me I'm
wise when it's your love speaking."
"I'm sorry, Shoel." She liked the smell of his arm and buried her head in the
crook of it, tickling him. "But I want to know everything you know."
He pushed her head into a more comfortable position. "You know what my Third
Stage instructor said? 'Know nothing! Learn to be totally naive.' "
She was astonished. "Nothing at all?"
"You approach everything with a clean slate, nothing on you or in you. Whatever
comes is written there by itself."
She began to see it. "Nothing to interfere."
"Correct. You are the original ignorant savage, completely unsophisticated to
the point where you back right into ultimate sophistication. You find it
without looking for it, you might say."
"Now, that is wise, Shoel. I'll bet you were the best student they ever had,
the quickest and the --"
"I thought it was interminable nonsense."
"You didn't!"
"Until one day I read a little twitch in me. It wasn't the movement of a muscle
or something someone else might detect. Just a . . . a twitch."
"Where was it?"
"Nowhere I could describe. But my Fourth Stage instructor had prepared me for
it. 'Grab that thing with gentle hands. Delicately.' One of the students
thought he meant your real hands. Oh, how we laughed."
"That was cruel." She touched his cheek and felt the beginning of his dark
stubble. It was late but she did not feel sleepy.
"I suppose it was cruel. But when the twitch came, I knew it. I had never felt
such a thing before. I was surprised by it, too, because knowing it then, I
knew it had been there all along. It was familiar. It was my Truthsense
twitching."
She thought she could feel Truthsense stirring within herself. The feeling of
wonder in his voice aroused something.
"It was mine then," he said. "It belonged to me and I belonged to it. No
separation ever again."
"How wonderful that must be." Awe and envy in her voice.
"No! Some of it I hate. Seeing some people this way is like seeing them
eviscerated, their guts hanging out."
"That's disgusting!"
"Yes, but there are compensations, love. There are people you meet, people who
are like beautiful flowers extended to you by an innocent child. Innocence. My
own innocence responds and my Truthsense is strengthened. That is what you do
for me, my love."
The no-ship of the Honored Matres arrived at Gammu and they sent her down to the
Landing Flat in the garbage lighter. It disgorged her beside the ship's
discards and excrement but she did not mind. Home! I'm home and Lampadas
survives.
The Rabbi, however, did not share her enthusiasm.
Once more, they sat in his study, but now she felt more familiar with Other
Memory, much more confident. He could see this.
"You are even more like them than ever! It's unclean."
"Rabbi, we all have unclean ancestors. I am fortunate in that I know some of
mine."
"What is this? What are you saying?"
"All of us are descendants of people who did nasty things, Rabbi. We don't like
to think of barbarians in our ancestry but they're there. "
"Such talk!"
"Reverend Mothers can recall them all, Rabbi. Remember, it is the victors who
breed. You understand?"
"I've never heard you talk so boldly. What has happened to you, daughter?"
" I survived, knowing that victory sometimes is achieved at a moral price."
"What is this? These are evil words."
"Evil? Barbarism is not even the proper word for some of the evil things our
ancestors did. The ancestors of all of us, Rabbi."
She saw she had hurt him and felt the cruelty of her own words but could not
stop. How could he escape the truth of what she said? He was an honorable man.
She spoke more softly but her words cut him even deeper. "Rabbi, if you shared
witness to some of the things Other Memory has forced me to know, you would come
back seeking new words for evil. Some things our ancestors have done debase the
worst label you could imagine."
"Rebecca . . . Rebecca . . . I know necessities of . . . "
"Don't make excuses about 'necessities of the times'! You, a Rabbi, know
better. When are we without a moral sense? It's just that sometimes we don't
listen."
He put his hands over his face, rocking back and forth in the old chair. It
creaked mournfully.
"Rabbi, you I have always loved and respected. I went through the Agony for
you. I shared Lampadas for you. Do not deny what I have learned from this."
He lowered his hands. " I do not deny, daughter. But permit me my pain."
"Out of all these realizations, Rabbi, the thing I must deal with most
immediately and without respite is that there are no innocents. "
"Rebecca!"
"Guilty may not be the right word, Rabbi, but our ancestors did things for which
payment must be made."
"That I understand, Rebecca. It is a balance that --"
"Don't tell me you understand when I know you don't." She stood and glared down
at him. "It's not a balance book that you set aright. How far back would you
go?"
"Rebecca, I am your Rabbi. You must not talk this way, especially to me."
"The farther back you go, Rabbi, the worse the evil atrocities and higher the
price. You cannot go back that far but I am forced to it. "
Turning, she left him, ignoring the pleading in his voice, the painful way he
said her name. As she closed the door, she heard him say: "What have we done?
Israel, help her."
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical
accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.
-The Bashar Teg
When left to his own devices, Idaho often explored his no-ship prison. So much
to see and learn about this Ixian artifact. It was a cave of wonders.
He paused on this afternoon's restless walk through his quarters and looked at
the tiny comeyes built into the glittering surface of a doorway. They were
watching him. He had the odd sensation of seeing himself through those prying
eyes. What did the Sisters think when they looked at him? The blocky gholachild
from Gammu's long-dead Keep had become a lanky man: dark skin and hair.
The hair was longer than when he had entered this no-ship on the last day of
Dune.
Bene Gesserit eyes peered below the skin. He was sure they suspected he was a
Mentat and he feared how they might interpret that. How could a Mentat expect
to hide the fact from Reverend Mothers indefinitely? Foolishness! He knew they
already suspected him of Truthsay.
He waved at the comeyes and said: "I'm restless. I think I'll explore."
Bellonda hated it when he took that jocular attitude toward surveillance. She
did not like him to roam the ship. She did not try to hide it from him. He
could see the unspoken question in her glowering features whenever she came to
confront him: "Is he looking for a way to escape?"
Exactly what I'm doing, Bell, but not in the way you suspect.
The no-ship presented him with fixed limits: the exterior forcefield he could
not penetrate, certain machinery areas where the drive (so he was told) had been
temporarily disabled, guard quarters (he could see into some of them but not
enter), the armory, the section reserved to the captive Tleilaxu, Scytale. He
occasionally met Scytale at one of the barriers and they peered at each other
across the silencing field that held them apart. Then there was the information
barrier -- sections of Shiprecords that would not respond to his questions,
answers his warders would not give.
Within these limits lay a lifetime of things to see and learn, even the lifetime
of some three hundred Standard Years he could reasonably expect.
If Honored Matres do not find us.
Idaho saw himself as the game they sought, wanting him even more than they
wanted the women of Chapterhouse. He had no illusions about what the hunters
would do to him. They knew he was here. The men he trained in sexual bonding
and sent out to plague the Honored Matres -- those men taunted the hunters.
When the Sisters learned of his Mentat ability they would know immediately that
his mind carried the memories of more than one ghola lifetime. The original did
not have that talent. They would suspect he was a latent Kwisatz Haderach.
Look how they rationed his melange. They were clearly terrified of repeating
the mistake they had made with Paul Atreides and his Tyrant son. Thirty-five
hundred years of bondage!
But dealing with Murbella required Mentat awareness. He entered every encounter
with her not expecting to achieve answers then or later. It was a typical
Mentat approach: concentrate on the questions. Mentats accumulated questions
the way others accumulated answers. Questions created their own patterns and
systems. This produced the most important shapes. You looked at your universe
through self-created patterns -- all composed of images, words, and labels
(everything temporary), all mingled in sensory impulses that reflected off his
internal constructs the way light bounced from bright surfaces.
Idaho's original Mentat instructor had formed the temporary words for that first
tentative construct: "Watch for consistent movements against your internal
screen."
From that first hesitant dip into Mentat powers, Idaho could trace the growth of
a sensitivity to changes in his own observations, always becoming Mentat.
Bellonda was his most severe trial. He dreaded her penetrating gaze and
slashing questions. Mentat probing Mentat. He met her forays delicately, with
reserve and patience. Now, what are you after?
As if he didn't know.
He wore patience as a mask. But fear came naturally and there was no harm in
showing it. Bellonda did not hide her wish to see him dead.
Idaho accepted the fact that soon the watchers would see only one possible
source for the skills he was forced to use.
A Mentat's real skills lay in that mental construct they called "the great
synthesis." It required a patience that non-Mentats did not even imagine
possible. Mentat schools defined it as perseverance. You were a primitive
tracker, able to read minuscule signs, tiny disturbances in the environment, and
follow where these led. At the same time, you remained open to broad motions
all around and within. This produced naivete, the basic Mentat posture, akin to
that of Truthsayers but far more sweeping.
"You are open to whatever the universe may do," his first instructor had said.
"Your mind is not a computer; it is a response-tool keyed to whatever your
senses display."
Idaho always recognized when Bellonda's senses were open. She stood there, gaze
slightly withdrawn, and he knew few preconceptions cluttered her mind. His
defense lay in her basic flaw: Opening the senses required an idealism that was
foreign to Bellonda. She did not ask the best questions and he wondered at
this. Would Odrade use a flawed Mentat? It went against her other
performances.
I seek the questions that form the best images.
Doing this, you never thought of yourself as clever, that you had the formula to
provide the solution. You remained as responsive to new questions as you did to
new patterns. Testing, re-testing, shaping and re-shaping. A constant process,
never stopping, never satisfied. It was your own private pavane, similar to
that of other Mentats but it carried always your own unique posture and steps.
"You are never truly a Mentat. That is why we call it 'The Endless Goal.' "
The words of his teachers were burned into his awareness.
As he accumulated observations of Bellonda, he came to appreciate a viewpoint of
those great Mentat Masters who had taught him. "Reverend Mothers do not make
the best Mentats."
No Bene Gesserit appeared capable of completely removing herself from that
binding absolute she achieved in the Spice Agony: loyalty to her Sisterhood.
His teachers had warned against absolutes. They created a serious flaw in a
Mentat.
"Everything you do, everything you sense and say is experiment. No deduction
final. Nothing stops until dead and perhaps not even then, because each life
creates endless ripples. Induction bounces within and you sensitize yourself to
it. Deduction conveys illusions of absolutes. Kick the truth and shatter it!"
When Bellonda's questions touched on the relationship between himself and
Murbella, he saw vague emotional responses. Amusement? Jealousy? He could
accept amusement (and even jealousy) about the compelling sexual demands of this
mutual addiction. Is the ecstasy truly that great?
He wandered through his quarters this afternoon feeling displaced, as though
newly here and not yet accepting these rooms as home. That is emotion talking
to me.
Over the years of his confinement, these quarters had taken on a lived-in
appearance. This was his cave, the former supercargo suite: large rooms with
slightly curved walls -- bedroom, library-workroom, sitting room, a green-tiled
bath with dry and wet cleansing systems, and a long practice hall he shared with
Murbella for exercise.
The rooms bore a unique collection of artifacts and marks of his presence: that
slingchair placed at just the right angle to the console and projector linking
him to Shipsystems, those ridulian records on that low side table. And there
were stains of occupancy -- that dark brown blot on the worktable. Spilled food
had left its indelible mark.
He moved restlessly into his sleeping quarters. The light was dimmer. His
ability to identify the familiar held true for odors. There was a saliva-like
smell to the bed -- the residue of last night's sexual collision.
That is the proper word: Collision.
The no-ship's air-filtered, recycled and sweetened -- often bored him. No break
in the no-ship maze to the exterior world ever remained open long. He sometimes
sat silently sniffing, hoping for a faint trace of air that had not been
adjusted to this prison's demands.
There is a way to escape!
He wandered out of his quarters and down the corridor, took the dropchute at the
end of the passage and emerged in the ship's lowest level.
What is really happening out there in that world open to the sky?
The bits Odrade told him about events filled him with dread and a trapped
feeling. No place to run! Am I wise to share my fears with Sheeana? Murbella
merely laughed. "I will protect you, love. Honored Matres won't hurt me."
Another false dream.
But Sheeana . . . how quickly she had picked up the hand-language and entered
the spirit of his conspiracy. Conspiracy? No . . . I doubt that any Reverend
Mother will act against her Sisters. Even the Lady Jessica went back to them in
the end. But I don't ask Sheeana to act against the Sisterhood, only that she
protect us from Murbella's folly.
The enormous powers of the hunters made only the destruction predictable. A
Mentat had but to look at their disruptive violence. They brought something
else as well, something hinting at matters out there in the Scattering. What
were these Futars Odrade mentioned with such casualness? Part human, part
beast? That had been Lucilla's guess. And where is Lucilla?
He found himself presently in the Great Hold, the kilometer-long cargo space
where they had carried the last giant sandworm of Dune, bringing it to
Chapterhouse. The area still smelled of spice and sand, filling his mind with
long-ago and the dead far away. He knew why he came so often to the Great Hold,
doing it sometimes without even thinking, as he had just done. It both
attracted and repelled. The illusion of unlimited space with traces of dust,
sand, and spice carried the nostalgia of lost freedoms. But there was another
side. This is where it always happened to him.
Will it happen today?
Without warning, the sense of being in the Great Hold would vanish. Then . . .
the net shimmering in a molten sky. He was aware when the vision came that he
was not really seeing a net. His mind translated what the senses could not
define.
A shimmering net undulating like an infinite borealis.
Then the net would part and he would see the two people -- man and woman. How
ordinary they appeared and yet extraordinary. A grandmother and grandfather in
antique clothing: bib coveralls for the man and a long dress with headscarf for
the woman. Working in a flower garden! He thought it must be more of the
illusion. I am seeing this but it is not really what I see.
They always noticed him eventually. He heard their voices. "There he is again,
Marty," the man would say, calling the woman's attention to Idaho.
"I wonder how it is he can look through?" Marty asked once. "Doesn't seem
possible."
"He's spread pretty thin, I think. Wonder if he knows the danger?"
Danger. That was the word that always jerked him out of the vision.
"Not at your console today?"
For just an instant, Idaho thought it was the vision, the voice of that odd
woman, then he realized it was Odrade. Her voice came from close behind. He
whirled and saw he had failed to close the hatch. She had followed him into the
Hold, stalking him quietly, avoiding the scattered patches of sand that might
have grated underfoot and betrayed her approach.
She looked tired and impatient. Why did she think I would be at my console?
As though answering his unspoken question, she said: " I find you at your
console so often lately. For what do you search, Duncan?"
He shook his head without speaking. Why do I suddenly feel in peril?
It was a rare feeling in Odrade's company. He could remember other occasions,
though. Once when she had stared suspiciously at his hands in the field of his
console. Fear associated with my console. Do I reveal my Mentat hunger for
data? Do they guess that I have hidden my private self there?
"Do I get no privacy at all?" Anger and attack.
She shook her head slowly from side to side as much as to say, "You can do
better than that."
"This is your second visit today," he accused.
"I must say you're looking well, Duncan." More circumlocution.
"Is that what your watchers say?"
"Don't be petty. I came for a chat with Murbella. She said you'd be down
here."
"I suppose you know Murbella's pregnant again." Was that trying to placate her?
"For which we are grateful. I came to tell you that Sheeana wants to visit you
again."
Why would Odrade announce that?
Her words filled him with images of the Dune waif who had become a full Reverend
Mother (the youngest ever, so they said). Sheeana, his confidante, out there
watching over that last great sandworm. Had it finally perpetuated itself? Why
should Odrade interest herself in Sheeana's visit?
"Sheeana wants to discuss the Tyrant with you."
She saw the surprise this produced.
"What could I possibly add to Sheeana's knowledge of Leto II?" he demanded.
"She's a Reverend Mother."
"You knew the Atreides intimately."
Ahhhhh. She's hunting for the Mentat.
"But you said she wanted to discuss Leto and it's not safe to think of him as
Atreides."
"Oh, but he was. Refined into something more elemental than anyone before him,
but one of us, nonetheless."
One of us! She reminded him that she, too, was Atreides. Calling in his neverending
debt to the family!
"So you say."
"Shouldn't we stop playing this foolish game?"
Caution gripped him. He knew she saw it. Reverend Mothers were so damnably
sensitive. He stared at her, not daring to speak, knowing even this told her
too much.
"We believe you remember more than one ghola lifetime." And when he still did
not respond, "Come, come, Duncan! Are you a Mentat?"
The way she spoke, as much accusation as question, he knew concealment had
ended. It was almost a relief.
"And if I am?"
"The Tleilaxu mixed the cells from more than one Idaho ghola when they grew
you."
Idaho-ghola! He refused to think of himself in that abstraction. "Why is Leto
suddenly so important to you?" No escaping the admission in that response.
"Our worm has become sandtrout."
"Are they growing and propagating?"
"Apparently."
"Unless you contain them or eliminate them, Chapterhouse may become another
Dune. "
"You figured that out, did you?"
"Leto and I together."
"So you remember many lives. Fascinating. It makes you somewhat like us." How
unswerving her stare!
"Very different, I think." Have to get her off that track!
"You acquired the memories during your first encounter with Murbella?"
Who guessed it? Lucilla? She was there and might have guessed, confiding her
suspicions to her Sisters. He had to bring the deadly issue into the open.
"I'm not another Kwisatz Haderach!"
"You're not?" Studied objectivity. She allowed this to reveal itself, a
cruelty, he thought.
"You know I'm not!" He was fighting for his life and knew it. Not so much with
Odrade as with those others who watched and reviewed the comeye records.
"Tell me about your serial memories." That was a command from the Mother
Superior. No escaping it.
"I know those . . . lives. It's like one lifetime."
"That accumulation could be very valuable to us, Duncan. Do you also remember
the axlotl tanks?"
Her question sent his thoughts into the misty probings that caused him to
imagine strange things about the Tleilaxu -- great mounds of human flesh softly
visible to the imperfect newborn eyes, blurred and unfocused images, almostmemories
of emerging from birth canals. How could that accord with tanks?
"Scytale has provided us with the knowledge to make our own axlotl system,"
Odrade said.
System? Interesting word. "Does that mean you also duplicate Tleilaxu spice
production?"
"Scytale bargains for more than we will give. But spice will come in time, one
way or another."
Odrade heard herself speak firmly and wondered if he detected uncertainty. We
might not have the time to do it.
"The Sisters you Scatter are hobbled," he said, giving her a small taste of
Mentat awareness. "You're drawing on your spice stockpiles to supply them and
those must be finite."
"They have our axlotl knowledge and sandtrout."
He was shocked to silence by the possibility of countless Dunes being reproduced
in an infinite universe.
"They will solve the problem of melange supply with tanks or worms or both," she
said. This she could say sincerely. It came from statistical expectation. One
among those Scattered bands of Reverend Mothers should accomplish it.
"The tanks," he said. "I have strange . . . dreams." He had almost said
"musings."
"And well you should." Briefly, she told him how female flesh was incorporated.
"For making the spice, too?"
"We think so."
"Disgusting!"
"That's juvenile," she chided.
In such moments, he disliked her intensely. Once, he had reproached her for the
way Reverend Mothers removed themselves from "the common stream of human
emotions," and she had given him that identical answer.
Juvenile!
"For which there probably is no remedy," he said. "A disgraceful flaw in my
character."
"Were you thinking to debate morality with me?"
He thought he heard anger. "Not even ethics. We work by different rules."
"Rules are often an excuse to ignore compassion."
"Do I hear a faint echo of conscience in a Reverend Mother?"
"Deplorable. My Sisters would exile me if they thought conscience ruled me."
"You can be prodded, but not ruled."
"Very good, Duncan! I like you much better when you're openly Mentat."
"I distrust your liking."
She laughed aloud. "How like Bell!"
He stared at her dumbly, plunged by her laughter into sudden knowledge of the
way to escape his warders, remove himself from the constant Bene Gesserit
manipulations and live his own life. The way out lay not in machinery but in
the Sisterhood's flaws. The absolutes by which they thought they surrounded and
held him -- there was the way out!
And Sheeana knows! That's the bait she dangles in front of me.
When Idaho did not speak, Odrade said: "Tell me about those other lives."
"Wrong. I think of them as one continuous life."
"No deaths?"
He let a response form silently. Serial memories: the deaths were as
informative as the lives. Killed so many times by Leto himself!
"The deaths do not interrupt my memories."
"An odd kind of immortality," she said. "You know, don't you, that Tleilaxu
Masters recreated themselves? But you -- what did they hope to achieve, mixing
different gholas in one flesh?"
"Ask Scytale."
"Bell felt sure you were a Mentat. She will be delighted."
"I think not."
"I will see to it that she is delighted. My! I have so many questions I'm not
sure where to begin." She studied him, left hand to her chin.
Questions? Mentat demands flowed through Idaho's mind. He let the questions he
had asked himself so many times move of themselves, forming their patterns.
What did the Tleilaxu seek in one? They could not have included cells from all
of his ghola-selves for this incarnation. Yet . . . he had all of the memories.
What cosmic linkage accumulated all of those lives in this one self? Was that
the clue to the visions that beset him in the Great Hold? Half-memories formed
in his mind: his body in warm fluid, fed by tubes, massaged by machines, probed
and questioned by Tleilaxu observers. He sensed murmurous responses from semidormant
selves. The words had no meaning. It was as though he listened to a
foreign language coming from his own lips but he knew it was ordinary Galach.
The scope of what he sensed in Tleilaxu actions awed him. They investigated a
cosmos no one but the Bene Gesserit had ever dared touch. That the Bene Tleilax
did this for selfish reasons did not subtract from it. The endless rebirths of
Tleilaxu Masters were a reward worthy of daring.
Face Dancer servants to copy any life, any mind. The scope of the Tleilaxu
dream was as awesome as Bene Gesserit achievements.
"Scytale admits to memories of Muad'Dib's times," Odrade said. "You might
compare notes with him someday."
"That kind of immortality is a bargaining chip," he warned. "Could he sell it
to the Honored Matres?"
"He might. Come. Let's go back to your quarters."
In his workroom, she gestured him to the chair at his console and he wondered if
she was still hunting for his secrets. She bent over him to manipulate the
controls. The overhead projector produced a scene of desert to a horizon of
rolling dunes.
"Chapterhouse?" she said. "A wide band along our equator."
Excitement gripped him. "Sandtrout, you said. But are there any new worms?"
"Sheeana expects them soon."
"They require a large amount of spice as catalyst."
"We've gambled a great deal of melange out there. Leto told you about the
catalyst, didn't he? What else do you remember of him?"
"He killed me so many times it's an ache when I think about it."
She had the records from Dar-es-Balat on Dune to confirm this. "Killed you
himself, I know. Did he just throw you away when you were used up?"
" I sometimes performed up to expectations and was allowed a natural death."
"Was his Golden Path worth it?"
We don't understand his Golden Path nor the fermentations that produced it. He
said this.
"Interesting choice of word. A Mentat thinks of the Tyrant's eons as
fermentation."
"That erupted in the Scattering."
"Driven also by the Famine Times."
"You think he didn't anticipate famines?"
She did not reply, held to silence by his Mentat view. Golden Path: humankind
"erupting" into the universe . . . never again confined to any single planet and
susceptible to a singular fate. All of our eggs no longer in one basket.
"Leto thought of all humankind as a single organism," he said. "But he enlisted
us in his dream against our will."
"You Atreides always do that."
You Atreides! "Then you've paid your debt to us?"
" I didn't say that."
"Do you appreciate my present dilemma, Mentat?"
"How long have the sandtrout been at work?"
"More than eight Standard Years."
"How fast is our desert growing?"
Our desert! She gestured at the projection. "That's more than three times
larger than it was before the sandtrout."
"So fast!"
"Sheeana expects to see small worms any day."
"They tend not to surface until they reach about two meters." "So she says."
He spoke in a musing tone. "Each with a pearl of Leto's awareness in his
'endless dream.' "
"So he said and he never lied about such things."
"His lies were more subtle. Like a Reverend Mother's."
"You accuse us of lying?"
"Why does Sheeana want to see me?"
"Mentats! You think your questions are answers." Odrade shook her head in mock
dismay. "She must learn as much as possible about the Tyrant as the center of
religious adoration."
"Gods below! Why?"
"The cult of Sheeana has spread. It's all over the Old Empire and beyond,
carried by surviving priests from Rakis."
"From Dune," he corrected her. "Don't think of it as Arrakis or Rakis. It fogs
your mind."
She accepted his correction. He was fully Mentat now and she waited patiently.
"Sheeana talked to the sandworms on Dune," he said. "They responded." He met
her questioning stare. "Up to your old tricks with your Missionaria Protectiva,
eh?"
"The Tyrant is known as Dur and Guldur in the Scattering," she said, feeding his
Mentat naivete.
"You have a dangerous assignment for her. Does she know?"
"She knows and you could make it less dangerous."
"Then open your data systems to me."
"No limits?" She knew what Bell would say to that!
He nodded, unable to allow himself the hope that she might agree. Does she
suspect how desperately I want this? It was an ache where he held his knowledge
of how he might escape. Unimpeded access to information! She will think I want
the illusion of freedom.
"Will you be my Mentat, Duncan?"
"What choice do I have?"
"I will discuss your request in Council and give you our answer."
Is the escape door opening?
"I must think like an Honored Matre," he said, arguing for the comeyes and the
watchdogs who would review his request.
"Who could do it better than the one who lives with Murbella?" she asked.
Corruption wears infinite disguises.
-Tleilaxu Thu-zen
They do not know what I think nor what I can do, Scytale thought. Their
Truthsayers cannot read me. That, at least, he had salvaged from disaster --
the art of deception learned from his perfected Face Dancers.
He moved softly through his area of the no-ship, observing, cataloguing,
measuring. Every look weighed people or place in a mind trained to seek flaws.
Each Tleilaxu Master had known that someday God might set him a task to test his
commitment.
Very well! This was such a task. The Bene Gesserit who claimed they shared his
Great Belief swore it falsely. They were unclean. He no longer had companions
to cleanse him on his return from alien places. He had been cast into the
powindah universe, made prisoner by servants of Shaitan, was hunted by whores
from the Scattering. But none of those evil ones knew his resources. None
suspected how God would help him in this extremity.
I cleanse myself, God!
When the women of Shaitan had plucked him from the hands of the whores,
promising sanctuary and "every assistance," he had known them false.
The greater the test, the greater my faith.
Only a few minutes ago, he had watched through a shimmering barrier as Duncan
Idaho took a morning walk down the long corridor. The forcefield that kept them
apart prevented the passage of sound, but Scytale saw Idaho's lips move and read
the curse. Curse me, ghola, but we made you and still may use you.
God had introduced a Holy Accident into the Tleilaxu plan for this ghola, but
God always had larger designs. It was the task of the faithful to fit
themselves into God's plans and not demand that God follow the designs of
humans.
Scytale set himself to this test, renewing his holy pledge. It was done without
words in the ancient Bene Tleilax way of s'tori. "To achieve s'tori no
understanding is needed. S'tori exists without words, without even a name."
The magic of his God was his only bridge. Scytale felt this deeply. The
youngest Master in the highest kehl, he had known from the beginning he would be
chosen for this ultimate task. That knowledge was one of his strengths and he
saw it every time he looked in a mirror. God formed me to deceive the powindah!
His slight, childlike appearance was formed in a gray skin whose metallic
pigments blocked scanning probes. His diminutive shape distracted those who saw
him and hid the powers he had accumulated in serial ghola incarnations. Only
the Bene Gesserit carried older memories, but he knew evil guided them.
Scytale rubbed his breast, reminding himself of what was hidden there with such
skill that not even a scar marked the place. Each Master had carried this
resource -- a nullentropy capsule preserving the seed cells of a multitude:
fellow Masters of the central kehl, Face Dancers, technical specialists and
others he knew would be attractive to the women of Shaitan . . . and to many
weakling powindah! Paul Atreides and his beloved Chani were there. (Oh what
that had cost in searching garments of the dead for random cells!) The original
Duncan Idaho was there with other Atreides minions -- the Mentat Thufir Hawat,
Gurney Halleck, the Fremen Naib Stilgar . . . enough potential servants and
slaves to people a Tleilaxu universe.
The prize of prizes in the nullentropy tube, the ones he longed to bring into
existence, made him catch his breath when he thought of them. Perfect Face
Dancers! Perfect mimics. Perfect recorders of a victim's persona. Capable of
deceiving even the witches of the Bene Gesserit. Not even shere could prevent
them from capturing the mind of another.
The tube he thought of as his ultimate bargaining power. No one must know of
it. For now, he catalogued flaws.
There were enough gaps in the no-ship's defenses to gratify him. In his serial
lifetimes, he had collected skills the way his fellow Masters collected pleasing
baubles. They had always considered him too serious but now he had found the
place and time for vindication.
Study of the Bene Gesserit had always attracted him. Over the eons, he had
acquired a body of knowledge about them. He knew it held myths and
misinformation, but faith in the purposes of God assured him the view he held
would serve the Great Belief, no matter the rigors of Holy Testing.
Part of his Bene Gesserit catalog he called "Typicals," from the frequent
remark: "That's typical of them!"
The typicals fascinated him.
It was typical for them to tolerate gross but non-threatening behavior in others
they would not accept in themselves. "Bene Gesserit standards are higher."
Scytale had heard that even from some of his late companions.
"We have the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us," Odrade had once said.
Scytale included this among typicals, but her words did not accord with the
Great Belief. Only God saw your ultimate self! Odrade's boast had the sound of
hubris.
"They tell no casual lies. Truth serves them better."
He often wondered about that. Mother Superior herself quoted it as a rule of
the Bene Gesserit. There remained the fact that witches appeared to hold a
cynical view of truth. She dared claim it was Zensunni. "Whose truth?
Modified in what way? In what context?"
They had been seated the previous afternoon in his no-ship quarters. He had
asked for "a consultation on mutual problems," his euphemism for bargaining.
They were alone except for comeyes and the comings and goings of watchful
Sisters.
His quarters were comfortable enough: three plaz-walled rooms in restful green,
a soft bed, chairs reduced to fit his diminutive body.
This was an Ixian no-ship and he felt certain his warders did not suspect how
much he knew of it. As much as the Ixians. Ixian machines all around but never
an Ixian to be seen. He doubted there was a single Ixian on Chapterhouse. The
witches were notorious for doing their own maintenance.
Odrade moved and spoke slowly, watching him with care. "They are not
impulsive." You heard that often.
She asked after his comfort and appeared concerned for him.
He glanced around his sitting room. "I see no Ixians."
She pursed her lips with displeasure. "Is this why you asked for consultation?"
Of course not, witch! I merely practice my arts of distraction. You would not
expect me to mention things I wished to conceal. Then why would I call your
attention to Ixians when I know it is unlikely there are any dangerous intruders
walking freely on your accursed planet? Ahhh, the much vaunted Ixian connection
we Tleilaxu maintained so long. You know of that! You punished Ix memorably
more than once.
The technocrats of Ix might hesitate to irritate the Bene Gesserit, he thought,
but they would be extremely careful not to arouse the ire of Honored Matres.
Secret trading was indicated by the presence of this no-ship but the price must
have been ruinous and the circumlocutions exceptional. Very nasty, those whores
from the Scattering. They might need Ix themselves, he guessed. And Ix might
secretly defy the whores to make an arrangement with the Bene Gesserit. But the
limits were tight and chances of betrayal many.
These thoughts comforted him as he bargained. Odrade, in a brittle mood,
unsettled him several times with silences during which she stared at him in that
disturbing Bene Gesserit way.
The bargaining chips were large -- no less than survival for each of them and
always in the pot that tenuous thing: ascendancy, control of the human
universe, perpetuation of your own ways as the dominant pattern.
Give me a small opening that I may expand, Scytale thought. Give me my own Face
Dancers. Give me servants who will do only my bidding.
"It is a small thing to ask," he said. " I seek personal comfort, my own
servants."
Odrade continued to stare at him in that weighted way of the Bene Gesserit that
always seemed to peel away the masks and see deep into you.
But I have masks you have not penetrated.
He could see that she found him repulsive -- the way her gaze fixed sequentially
on each of his features. He knew what she was thinking. An elfin figure with
narrow face and puckish eyes. Widow's peak. Her gaze moved down: tiny mouth
with sharp teeth and pointed canines.
Scytale knew himself to be a figure out of humankind's most dangerously
disturbing mythologies. Odrade would ask herself: Why did the Bene Tleilax
choose this particular physical appearance when their control of genetics could
have given them something more impressive?
For the very reason that it disturbs you, powindah dirt!
He thought immediately of another Typical: "The Bene Gesserit seldom scatter
dirt."
Scytale had seen the dirty aftermath of many Bene Gesserit actions. Look at
what happened to Dune! Burnt to cinders because you women of Shaitan chose that
holy ground to challenge the whores. Even the revenants of our Prophet gone to
their reward. Everyone dead!
And he hardly dared contemplate his own losses. No Tleilaxu planet had escaped
the fate of Dune. The Bene Gesserit caused that! And he must suffer their
tolerance -- a refugee with only God to support him.
He asked Odrade about scattered dirt on Dune.
"You find that only when we are in extremis."
"Is that why you attracted the violence of those whores?"
She refused to discuss it.
One of Scytale's late companions had said: "The Bene Gesserit leave straight
tracks. You might think them complex, but when you look closely their way
smooths."
That companion and all the others had been butchered by the whores. His only
survival lay in cells of a nullentropy capsule. So much for a dead Master's
wisdom!
Odrade wanted more technical information about axlotl tanks. Ohhhh, how
cleverly she worded her questions!
Bargaining for survival, and each little bit carried a heavy weight. What had
he received for his tiny measured pieces of data about the axlotl tanks? Odrade
took him out of the ship occasionally now. But the whole planet was as much a
prison to him as this ship. Where could he go that the witches would not find
him?
What were they doing with their own axlotl tanks? He was not even sure about
this. The witches lied with such facility.
Was it wrong to supply them even with limited knowledge? He realized now he had
told them far more than the bare biotechnical details to which he had confined
himself. They definitely deduced how Masters had created a limited immortality
-- always a ghola-replacement growing in the tanks. That, too, was lost! He
wanted to scream this at her in his frustrated rage.
Questions . . . obvious questions.
He parried her questions with wordy arguments about "my need for Face Dancer
servants and my own Shipsystem console."
She was slyly adamant, probing for more knowledge of the tanks. "The
information to produce melange from our tanks might induce us to be more liberal
with our guest."
Our tanks! Our guest!
These women were like a plasteel wall. No tanks for his personal use. All of
that Tleilaxu power gone. It was a thought full of mournful self-pity. He
restored himself with a reminder: God obviously tested his resourcefulness.
They think they hold me in a trap. But their restrictions hurt. No Face Dancer
servants? Very well. He would seek other servants. Not Face Dancers.
Scytale felt the deepest anguish of his many lives when he thought of his lost
Face Dancers -- his mutable slaves. Damn these women and their pretense that
they shared the Great Belief! Omnipresent acolytes and Reverend Mothers always
snooping around. Spies! And comeyes everywhere. Oppressive.
On first coming to Chapterhouse, he had sensed a shyness about his jailers, a
privacy that became intense when he probed into the workings of their order.
Later, he came to see this as a circling up, all facing outward at any threat.
What is ours is ours. You may not enter!
Scytale recognized a parental posturing in this, a maternal view of humankind:
"Behave or we will punish you!" And Bene Gesserit punishments certainly were to
be avoided.
As Odrade continued to demand more than he would give, Scytale fastened his
attention on a typical he felt sure was true: They cannot love. But he was
forced to agree. Neither love nor hate were purely rational. He thought of
such emotions as a dark fountain shadowing the air all around, a primitive
gusher that sprayed unsuspecting humans.
How this woman does chatter! He watched her, not really listening. What were
their flaws? Was it a weakness that they avoided music? Did they fear the
secret play on emotions? The aversion appeared to be heavily conditioned, but
the conditioning did not always succeed. In his many lives he had seen witches
appear to enjoy music. When he questioned Odrade, she became quite heated, and
he suspected a deliberate display to mislead him.
"We cannot let ourselves be distracted!"
"Don't you ever replay great musical performances in memory? I'm told that in
ancient times . . . "
"Of what use is music played on instruments no longer known to most people?"
"Oh? What instruments are those?"
"Where would you find a piano?" Still in that false anger. "Terrible
instruments to tune and even more difficult to play."
How prettily she protests. "I've never heard of this . . . this . . . piano,
did you say? Is it like the baliset?"
"Distant cousins. But it could only be tuned to an approximate key. An
idiosyncracy of the instrument."
"Why do you single out this . . . this piano?"
"Because I sometimes think it too bad we no longer have it. Producing
perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms."
Perfection from imperfections! She was trying to distract him with Zensunni
words, feeding the illusion that these witches shared his Great Belief. He had
been warned many times about this peculiarity of Bene Gesserit bargaining. They
approached everything from an oblique angle, revealing only at the last instant
what they really sought. But he knew what they bargained for here. She wanted
all of his knowledge and sought to pay nothing. Still, how tempting her words
were.
Scytale felt a deep wariness. Her words fitted themselves so neatly into her
claim that the Bene Gesserit sought only to perfect human society. So she
thought she could teach him! Another typical: "They see themselves as
teachers."
When he expressed doubt of this claim, she said, "Naturally we build up
pressures in societies we influence. We do it that we may direct those
pressures."
"I find this discordant," he complained.
"Why Master Scytale! It's a very common pattern. Governments often do this to
produce violence against chosen targets. You did it yourselves! And see where
it got you."
So she dares claim the Tleilaxu brought this calamity on themselves!
"We follow the lesson of the Great Messenger," she said, using the Islamiyat for
the Prophet Leto II. The words sounded alien on her lips, but he was taken
aback. She knew how all Tleilaxu revered the Prophet.
But I have heard these women call Him Tyrant!
Still speaking Islamiyat, she demanded, "Was it not His goal to divert violence,
producing a lesson of value to all?"
Does she joke about the Great Belief?
"That is why we accepted him," she said. "He did not play by our rules but he
played for our goal."
She dared say she accepted the Prophet!
He did not challenge her, although the provocation was great. A delicate thing,
a Reverend Mother's view of herself and her behavior. He suspected they
constantly readjusted this view, never bouncing far in any direction. No selfhate,
no self-love. Confidence, yes. Maddening self-confidence. But that did
not require hate or love. Only a cool head, every judgment ready for
correction, just as she claimed. It would seldom require praise. A job well
done? Well, what else did you expect?
"Bene Gesserit training strengthens the character." That was Folk Wisdom's most
popular typical.
He tried to start an argument with her on this. "Isn't Honored Matres'
conditioning the same as yours? Look at Murbella!"
"Is it generalities you want, Scytale?" Was that amusement in her tone?
"A collision between two conditioning systems, isn't that a good way to view
this confrontation?" he ventured.
"And the more powerful will emerge victorious, of course."
Definitely sneering!
"Isn't that how it always works?" His anger not well bridled.
"Must a Bene Gesserit remind a Tleilaxu that subtleties are another kind of
weapon? Have you not practiced deception? A feigned weakness to deflect your
enemies and lead them into traps? Vulnerabilities can be created."
Of course! She knows about the eons of Tleilaxu deception, creating an image of
inept stupidities.
"So that's how you expect to deal with our foes?"
"We intend to punish them, Scytale."
Such implacable determination!
New things he learned about the Bene Gesserit filled him with misgivings.
Odrade, taking him for a well-guarded afternoon stroll in the cold winter
outside the ship (burly Proctors just a pace behind), stopped to watch a small
procession coming from Central. Five Bene Gesserit women, two of them acolytes
by their white-trimmed robes, but the other three in an unrelieved gray not
known to him. They wheeled a cart into one of the orchards. A frigid wind blew
across them. A few old leaves whipped from the dark branches. The cart bore a
long bundle shrouded in white. A body? It was the right shape.
When he asked, Odrade regaled him with an account of Bene Gesserit burial
practices.
If there was a body to bury, it was done with the casual dispatch he now
witnessed. No Reverend Mother ever had an obituary or wanted time-wasting
rituals. Did her memory not live on in her Sisters?
He started to argue that this was irreverent but she cut him off.
"Given the phenomenon of death, all attachments in life are temporary! We
modify that somewhat in Other Memory. You did a similar thing, Scytale. And
now we incorporate some of your abilities in our bag of tricks. Oh, yes!
That's the way we think of such knowledge. It merely modifies the pattern."
"An irreverent practice!"
"Nothing irreverent about it. Into the dirt they go where, at least, they can
become fertilizer." And she continued to describe the scene without giving him
a chance for further protests.
They had this regular routine he now observed, she said. A large mechanical
auger was wheeled into the orchard, where it drilled a suitable hole in the
earth. The corpse, bound in that cheap cloth, was buried vertically and an
orchard tree planted over it. Orchards were laid out in grid patterns, a
cenotaph at one corner where the locations of burials were recorded. He saw the
cenotaph when she pointed it out, a square green thing about three meters high.
"I think that body's being buried at about C-21," she said, watching the auger
at work while the burial team waited, leaning against the cart. "That one will
fertilize an apple tree." She sounded ungodly happy about it!
As they watched the auger withdraw and the cart being tipped, the body sliding
into the hole, Odrade began to hum.
Scytale was surprised. "You said the Bene Gesserit avoided music."
"Just an old ditty."
The Bene Gesserit remained a puzzle and, more than ever, he saw the weakness of
typicals. How could you bargain with people whose patterns did not follow an
acceptable path? You might think you understood them and then they shot off in
a new direction. They were untypical! Trying to understand them disrupted his
sense of order. He was certain he had not received anything real in all of this
bargaining. A bit more freedom that was actually the illusion of freedom.
Nothing he really wanted came from this cold-faced witch! It was tantalizing to
try piecing together any substance from what he knew about the Bene Gesserit.
There was, for instance, the claim they did without most bureaucratic systems
and record keeping. Except for Bellonda's Archives, of course, and every time
he mentioned those, Odrade said "Heaven guard us!" or something equivalent.
"Now he asked how do you maintain yourselves without officials and records?" He
was deeply puzzled.
"A thing needs doing, we do it. Bury a Sister?" She pointed to the scene in
the orchard where shovels had been brought into play and dirt was being tamped
on the grave.
"That's how it's done and there's always someone around who's responsible. They
know who they are."
"Who . . . who takes care of this unwholesome . . . ?"
"It's not unwholesome! It's part of our education. Failed Sisters usually
supervise. Acolytes do the work."
"Don't they . . . I mean, isn't this distasteful to them? Failed Sisters, you
say. And acolytes. It would seem to be more of a punishment than . . ."
"Punishment! Come, come, Scytale. Have you only one song to sing?" She
pointed at the burial party. "After their apprenticeship, all of our people
willingly accept their jobs."
"But no . . . ahhh, bureaucratic . . ."
"We're not stupid!"
Again, he did not understand, but she responded to his silent puzzlement.
"Surely you know bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they
attain commanding power."
He had difficulty seeing the relevance. Where was she leading him?
When he remained silent, she said: "Honored Matres have all the marks of
bureaucracy. Ministers of this, Great Honored Matres of that, a powerful few at
the top and many functionaries below. They already are full of adolescent
hungers. Like voracious predators, they never consider how they exterminate
their prey. A tight relationship: Reduce the numbers of those upon whom you
feed and you bring your own structure crashing down."
He found it difficult to believe the witches really saw Honored Matres this way
and said so.
"If you survive, Scytale, you will see my words made real. Great cries of rage
by those unthinking women at the necessity to retrench. Much new effort to
wring the most out of their prey. Capture more of them! Squeeze them harder!
It will just mean quicker extermination. Idaho says they're already in the dieback
stage."
The ghola says this? So she was using him as a Mentat! "Where do you get such
ideas? Surely this does not originate with your ghola." Continue to believe
he's yours!
"He merely confirmed our assessment. An example in Other Memory alerted us."
"Ohh?" This thing of Other Memory bothered him. Could their claim be true?
Memories from his own multiple lives were of enormous value. He asked for
confirmation.
"We remembered the relationship between a food animal called a snowshoe rabbit
and a predatory cat called a lynx. The cat population always grew to follow the
population of the rabbits, and then overfeeding dumped the predators into famine
times and severe die-back."
"An interesting term, die-back."
"Descriptive of what we intend for the Honored Matres."
When their meeting ended (without anything gained for him), Scytale found
himself more confused than ever. Was that truly their intent? The damnable
woman! He could not be sure of anything she said.
When she returned him to his quarters in the ship, Scytale stood for a long time
looking through the barrier field at the long corridor where Idaho and Murbella
sometimes came on their way to their practice floor. He knew that must be where
they went through a wide doorway down there. They always emerged sweating and
breathing deeply.
Neither of his fellow prisoners appeared, although he loitered there for more
than an hour.
She uses the ghola as a Mentat! That must mean he has access to a Shipsystems
console. Surely, she would not deprive her Mentat of his data. Somehow, I must
contrive it that Idaho and I meet intimately. There's always the whistling
language we impress on every ghola. I must not appear too anxious. A small
concession in the bargaining, perhaps. A complaint that my quarters are
confining. They see how I chafe at imprisonment.
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined
only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles
reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
-Mentat Text One (decto)
They wheeled Lucilla into Great Honored Matre's presence in a tubular cage -- a
cage within a cage. Shigawire netting confined her to the center of the thing.
"I am Great Honored Matre," the woman in the heavy black chair greeted her.
Small woman, red-gold leotards. "The cage is for your protection should you try
to use Voice. We are immune. Our immunity takes the form of a reflex. We
kill. A number of you have died that way. We know Voice and use it. Remember
it when I release you from your cage." She waved away the servants who had
brought the cage. "Go! Go!"
Lucilla looked around at the room. Windowless. Almost square. Lighted by a
few silvery glowglobes. Acid-green walls. Typical interrogation setting. It
was somewhere high. They had brought her cage in a nulltube shortly after dawn.
A panel behind Great Honored Matre snapped aside and a smaller cage came sliding
into the room on a hidden mechanism. This cage was square and in it stood what
she thought at first was a naked man until he turned and looked at her.
Futar! It had a wide face and she saw the canines.
"Want back rub," the Futar said.
"Yes, darling. I'll rub your back later."
"Want eat," the Futar said. It glared at Lucilla.
"Later, darling."
The Futar continued to study Lucilla. "You Handler?" it asked.
"Of course she's not a Handler!"
"Want eat," the Futar insisted.
"Later, I said! For now, you just sit there and purr for me."
The Futar squatted in its cage and a rumbling sound issued from its throat.
"Aren't they sweet when they purr?" Great Honored Matre obviously did not
expect an answer.
The presence of the Futar puzzled Lucilla. Those things were supposed to hunt
and kill Honored Matres. It was caged, though.
"Where did you capture it?" Lucilla asked.
"On Gammu." She did not see what she had revealed.
And this is junction, Lucilla thought. She had recognized it from the lighter
the evening before.
The Futar stopped purring. "Eat," it grumbled.
Lucilla would have liked something to eat. They had not fed her in three days
and she was forced to suppress hunger pangs. Small sips of water from a
literjon left in the cage helped but that was almost empty. The servants who
had brought her had laughed at her request for food. "Futars like lean meat!"
It was the absence of melange that plagued her most. She had begun to feel the
first withdrawal pains that morning.
I shall have to kill myself soon.
The Lampadas horde pleaded for her to endure. Be brave. What if that wild
Reverend Mother fails us?
Spider Queen. That is what Odrade calls this woman.
Great Honored Matre continued to study her, hand to chin. It was a weak chin.
In a face without positive features, the negative attracted the gaze.
"You will lose in the end, you know," Great Honored Matre said.
"Whistling past the graveyard," Lucilla said and then had to explain the
expression.
There was a polite show of interest on Great Honored Matre's face. How
interesting.
"Any of my aides would have killed you immediately for saying that. This is one
of the reasons we are alone. I am curious why you would say such a thing?"
Lucilla glanced at the squatting Futar. "Futars did not occur overnight. They
were genetically created from wild animal stock for one purpose."
"Careful!" Orange flamed in Great Honored Matre's eyes.
"Generations of development went into the creation of the Futars," Lucilla said.
"We hunt them for our pleasure!"
"And the hunter becomes the hunted."
Great Honored Matre leaped to her feet, eyes completely orange. The Futar
became agitated and began whining. This calmed the woman. Slowly, she sank
back into her chair. One hand gestured at the caged Futar. "It's all right,
darling. You'll eat soon and then I'll rub your back."
The Futar resumed its purring.
"So you think we came back here as refugees," Great Honored Matre said. "Yes!
Don't try to deny it."
"Worms often turn," Lucilla said.
"Worms? You mean like those monstrosities we destroyed on Rakis?"
It was tempting to prod this Honored Matre and evoke the dramatic response.
Alarm her enough and she would certainly kill.
Please, Sister! the Lampadas horde begged. Endure.
You think I can escape from this place? That silenced them, except for one
faint protest. Remember! We are the ancient doll: seven times down, eight
times up. It came with a rocking image of a small red doll, grinning Buddha
face and hands clasped over its fat belly.
"You're obviously referring to the revenants of the God Emperor," Lucilla said.
" I had something else in mind."
Great Honored Matre took her time considering this. The orange faded from her
eyes.
She's playing with me, Lucilla thought. She intends to kill me and feed me to
her pet.
But think of the tactical information you could provide if we did escape!
We! But there was no avoiding the accuracy of that protest. They had brought
her cage from the lighter while it was still daylight. Approaches to the Spider
Queen's lair were well planned for difficult access but the planning amused
Lucilla. Very ancient, out-of-date planning. Narrow places in the approach
lanes with observation turrets projecting from the ground like dull gray
mushrooms appearing at the proper places on their mycelium. Sharp turns at
critical points. No ordinary ground vehicle could negotiate such turns at
speed.
There was mention of this in Teg's critique of junction, she recalled. Nonsense
defenses. One had only to bring in heavy equipment or go over such crude
installations another way and the things were isolated. Linked underground,
naturally, but that could be disrupted by explosives. Ligate them, cut them off
from their source, and they would fall piecemeal. No more precious energy
coming down your tube, idiots! Visible sense of security and Honored Matres
kept it. For reassurance! Their defenders must spend a great deal of energy on
useless displays to give these women a false sense of security.
The hallways! Remember the hallways.
Yes, the hallways in this gigantic building were enormous, the better to
accommodate giant tanks in which Guild Navigators were forced to live
groundside. Ventilation systems low along the halls to take out and reclaim
spilled melange gas. She could imagine hatches thumping open and closed with
disturbing reverberations. Guildsmen never seemed to mind loud noises. Energy
transmission lines for mobile suspensors were thick black snakes winding across
passages and into every room she had glimpsed. Wouldn't do to keep a Navigator
from snooping any place he desired.
Many of the people she had seen wore guide pulsers. Even Honored Matres. So
they got lost here. Everything under the one giant mound of a roof with its
phallic towers. The new residents found this attractive. Heavily insulated
from the crude outdoors (where none of the important people go anyway except to
kill things or watch the slaves at their amusing work and play). Through much
of it, she had seen a shabbiness that said minimal expenditure on maintenance.
They are not changing much. Teg's ground plan is still accurate.
See how valuable your observations could be?
Great Honored Matre stirred from her reverie. "It is just possible that I could
permit you to live. Provided you satisfy some of my curiosity."
"How do you know I won't respond to your curiosity with a flow of pure shit?"
Vulgarity amused Great Honored Matre. She almost laughed. Apparently no one
had ever warned her to beware of the Bene Gesserit when they resorted to
vulgarity. The motivation for it was sure to be something distressing. No
Voice, eh? She thinks that's my only resource? Great Honored Matre had said
enough and reacted enough to give any Reverend Mother a sure handle on her.
Body and speech signals always carried more information than was necessary for
comprehension. There was inevitable extra information to be sampled.
"Do you find us attractive?" Great Honored Matre asked.
Odd question. "People from the Scattering all possess a certain attraction."
Let her think I've seen many of them, including her enemies. "You're exotic,
meaning strange and new."
"And our sexual prowess?"
"There's an aura to that, naturally. Exciting and magnetic to some."
"But not to you."
Go for the chin! It was a suggestion from the horde. Why not?
"I've been studying your chin, Great Honored Matre."
"You have?" Surprised.
"It's obviously your childhood chin and you should be proud of that youthful
remembrance."
Not pleased at all but unable to show it. Hit the chin again.
"I'll bet your lovers often kiss your chin," Lucilla said.
Angry now and still unable to vent it. Threaten me, will you! Warn me not to
use Voice!
"Kiss chin," the Futar said.
"I said later, darling. Now will you shut up!"
Taking it out on her poor pet.
"But you have questions you want to ask me," Lucilla said. Sweetness itself.
Another warning signal to the knowledgeable. I'm one of those who pours sugar
syrup over everything. "How nice! Such a pleasant time when we're with you.
Isn't that beautiful! Weren't you clever to get it so cheaply! Easily.
Quickly." Supply your own adverb.
Great Honored Matre was a moment composing herself. She sensed that she had
been placed at a disadvantage but could not say how. She covered the moment
with an enigmatic smile, then: "But I said I would release you." She pressed
something on the side of her chair and a section of the tubular cage swung
aside, taking the shigawire netting with it. In the same instant, a low chair
lifted from a panel in the floor directly in front of her and not a pace away.
Lucilla seated herself in the chair, knees almost touching her inquisitor.
Feet. Remember they kill with their feet. She flexed her fingers, realizing
then that she had been gripping her hands into fists. Damn the tensions!
"You should have some food and drink," Great Honored Matre said. She pushed
something else on the side of her chair. A tray came up beside Lucilla --
plate, spoon, a glass brimming with red liquid. Showing off her toys.
Lucilla picked up the glass.
Poison? Smell it first.
She sampled the drink. Stimtea and melange! I'm hungry.
Lucilla returned an empty glass to the tray. The stim on her tongue smelled
sharply of melange. What is she doing? Wooing me? Lucilla felt a flow of
relief at the spice. The plate proved to hold beans in a piquant sauce. She
ate it all after sampling the first bite for unwanted additives. Garlic in the
sauce. She was hung up for the barest fraction of a second on Memory of this
ingredient -- adjunct to fine cooking, specific against werewolves, potent
treatment for flatulence.
"You find our food pleasant?"
Lucilla wiped her chin. "Very good. You are to be complimented on your chef."
Never compliment the chef in a private establishment. Chefs can be replaced.
Hostess is irreplaceable. "A nice touch with garlic."
"We've been studying some of the library salvaged from Lampadas." Gloating:
See what you lost? "So little of interest buried in all of that prattle."
Does she want you to be her librarian? Lucilla waited silently.
"Some of my aides think there may be clues to your witches' nest there or, at
least, a way to eliminate you quickly. So many languages!"
Does she need a translator? Be blunt!
"What interests you?"
"Very little. Who could possibly need accounts of the Butlerian Jihad?"
"They destroyed libraries, too."
"Don't patronize me!"
She's sharper than we thought. Keep it blunt.
"I thought I was the object of patronage."
"Listen to me, witch! You think you can be ruthless in defense of your nest but
you do not understand what it is to be ruthless."
"I don't think you have yet told me how I can satisfy your curiosity. "
"It's your science we want, witch!" She pitched her voice lower. "Let us be
reasonable. With your help we could achieve utopia."
And conquer all of your enemies and achieve orgasm every time.
"You think science holds the keys to utopia?"
"And better organization for our affairs."
Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity . . . Make that elevates "fatal
stupidity" to the status of religion.
"Paradox, Great Honored Matre. Science must be innovative. It brings change.
That's why science and bureaucracy fight a constant war."
Does she know her roots?
"But think of the power! Think of what you could control!" She doesn't know.
Honored Matre assumptions about control fascinated Lucilla. You controlled your
universe; you did not balance with it. You looked outward, never inward. You
did not train yourself to sense your own subtle responses, you produced muscles
(forces, powers) to overcome everything you defined as an obstacle. Were these
women blind?
When Lucilla did not speak, Honored Matre said: "We found much in the library
about the Bene Tleilax.
"You joined them for many projects, witch. Multiple projects: how to nullify a
no-ship's invisibility, how to penetrate the secrets of the living cell, your
Missionaria Protectiva, and something called 'The Language of God.' "
Lucilla produced a tight smile. Did they fear there might be a real god out
there somewhere? Give her a little taste! Be candid.
"We joined the Tleilaxu in nothing. Your people misinterpret what they found.
You worry about being patronized? How do you think God would feel about it? We
plant protective religions to help us. That is the Missionaria's function. The
Tleilaxu have only one religion."
"You organize religions?"
"Not quite. The organizational approach to religion is always apologetic. We
do not apologize."
"You are beginning to bore me. Why did we find so little about the God
Emperor?" Pouncing!
"Perhaps your people destroyed it."
"Ahhhh, then you do have an interest in him."
And so do you, Madame Spider!
"I would have presumed, Great Honored Matre, that Leto II and his Golden Path
were subjects of study at many of your academic centers."
That was cruel!
"We have no academic centers!"
"I find your interest in him surprising."
"Casual interest, no more."
And that Futar sprang from an oak tree struck by lightning!
"We call his Golden Path 'the paper chase.' He blew it into the infinite winds
and said: 'See? There is where it goes.' That's the Scattering."
"Some prefer to call it the Seeking."
"Could he really predict our future? Is that what interests you?"
Bullseye!
Great Honored Matre coughed into her hand.
"We say Muad'Dib created a future. Leto II un-created it."
"But if I could know . . ."
"Please! Great Honored Matre! People who demand that the oracle predict their
lives really want to know where the treasure is hidden."
"But of course!"
"Know your entire future and nothing will ever surprise you? Is that it?"
"In so many words."
"You don't want the future, you want now extended forever."
"I could not have said it better."
"And you said I bored you!"
"What?"
Orange in her eyes. Careful.
"Never another surprise? What could be more boring?"
"Ahhhh . . . Oh! But that's not what I mean."
"Then I'm afraid I do not understand what you want, Great Honored Matre."
"No matter. We'll return to it tomorrow."
Reprieve!
Great Honored Matre stood. "Back into your cage."
"Eat?" The Futar sounded plaintive.
" I have some wonderful food for you downstairs, darling. Then I'll rub your
back."
Lucilla entered her cage. Great Honored Matre threw a chair cushion in after
her. "Use that against the shigawire. See how kind I can be?"
The cage door sealed with a click.
The Futar in its cage slid back into the wall. The panel snapped closed over
it.
"They get so restless when they're hungry," Great Honored Matre said. She
opened the door to the room and turned to contemplate Lucilla for a moment.
"You will not be disturbed here. I am refusing permission for anyone else to
enter this room."
Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them
intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you
become totally ignorant.
-Mentat Text Two (dicto)
Periodically, Odrade went for dinner with acolytes and their Proctor-Watchers,
the most immediate warders in this mind-prison from which many would never be
released.
What the acolytes thought and did really informed the depths of Mother
Superior's consciousness on how well Chapterhouse functioned. Acolytes
responded from their moods and forebodings more directly than Reverend Mothers.
Full Sisters got very good at not being seen at their worst. They did not try
to conceal essentials, but anyone could walk in an orchard or close a door and
be out of the view of watchdogs.
Not so the acolytes.
There was little slack time in Central these days. Even the dining halls had
their constant streams of occupants no matter the hour. Workshifts were
staggered and it was easy for a Reverend Mother to adjust her circadian rhythms
to off-beat time. Odrade could not waste energy on such adjustments. At the
evening meal, she paused at the door to the Acolyte Hall and heard the sudden
hush.
Even the way they conveyed food to their mouths said something. Where did the
eyes go as the chopsticks progressed mouthward? Was it a quick stab and a rapid
chew before a convulsive swallow? That was a one to watch. She was brewing
upsets. And that thoughtful one over there who looked at each mouthful as
though wondering how they hid the poison in such slop? A creative mind behind
those eyes. Test her for a more sensitive position.
Odrade entered the hall.
The floor had a large checkerboard pattern, black and white plaz, virtually
unscratchable. Acolytes said the pattern was for Reverend Mothers to use as a
game board: "Place one of us here and another over there and some along that
central line. Move them thus -- winner take all."
Odrade took a seat near the corner of a table beside the western windows. The
acolytes made room for her, their movements quietly unobtrusive.
This hall was part of the oldest construction on Chapterhouse. Built of wood
with clear-span beams overhead, enormously thick and heavy things finished in
dull black. They were some twenty-five meters long without a joint. Somewhere
on Chapterhouse there was a grove of genetically tailored oaks reaching up to
sunlight in their carefully tended plantations. Trees going up thirty meters at
least without a limb, and more than two meters through the boles. They had been
planted when this hall was built, replacements for these beams when age weakened
them. Nineteen hundred SY the beams were supposed to endure.
How carefully the acolytes around her watched Mother Superior without ever
appearing to look directly at her.
Odrade turned her head to peer out the western windows at the sunset. Dust
again. The spreading intrusion from the desert inflamed the setting sun and set
it glowing like a distant ember that might explode into uncontrollable fire at
any instant.
Odrade suppressed a sigh. Thoughts such as these recreated her nightmare: the
chasm . . . the tightrope. She knew if she closed her eyes she would feel
herself swaying on the rope. The hunter with the axe was nearer!
Acolytes eating close by stirred nervously as though they sensed her disquiet.
Perhaps they did. Odrade heard the movement of fabrics and this dragged her out
of her nightmare. She had become sensitized to a new note in the sounds of
Central. There was a grating noise behind the most commonplace movements - that
chair being shifted behind her . . . and the opening of that kitchen door.
Rasping grit. Cleaning crews complained of sand and "the damnable dust."
Odrade stared out the window at the source of that irritation: wind from the
south. A dull haze, something between tan and earth brown, drew a curtain
across the horizon. After the wind, dustings of its deposits would be found in
building corners and on lee sides of hills. There was a flinty aroma to it,
something alkaline that irritated the nostrils.
She looked down at the table as a serving acolyte placed her meal in front of
her.
Odrade found herself enjoying this change from quick meals in her workroom and
private dining room. When she ate alone up there, acolytes brought food so
quietly and cleared away with such silent efficiency that sometimes she was
surprised to find everything gone. Here, dining was bustle and conversation.
In her quarters, Chef Duana might come in clucking, "You are not eating enough."
Odrade generally heeded such admonitions. Watchdogs had their uses.
Tonight's meal was sligpork in a sauce of soy and molasses, minimal melange, a
touch of basil and lemon. Fresh green beans cooked al dente with peppers. Dark
red grape juice to drink. She took a bite of sligpork with anticipation and
found it passable, a bit overcooked for her taste. Acolyte chefs had not missed
it by much.
Then why this feeling of too many such meals?
She swallowed and hypersensitivity identified additives. This food was not here
just to replenish Mother Superior's energy. Someone in the kitchen had asked
for her day's nutrition list and adjusted this plate accordingly.
Food is a trap, she thought. More addictions. She did not like the cunning
ways Chapterhouse chefs concealed things they put in the food "for the good of
the diners." They knew, of course, that a Reverend Mother could identify
ingredients and adjust metabolism within her limits. They were watching her
right now, wondering how Mother Superior would judge tonight's menu.
As she ate, she listened to the other diners. None intruded on her -- not
physically or vocally. Sounds returned almost to what they had been before her
entrance. Waggling tongues always changed their tone slightly when she entered
and resumed at lower volume.
An unspoken question lay in all of those busy minds around her:
Why is she here tonight?
Odrade sensed quiet awe in some nearby diners, a reaction Mother Superior
sometimes employed to her advantage. Awe with an edge on it. Acolytes
whispered among themselves (so the Proctors reported), "She has Taraza." They
meant Odrade possessed her late predecessor as Primary. The two of them were a
historical pair, required study for postulants.
Dar and Tar, already a legend.
Even Bellonda (dear old vicious Bell) came at Odrade obliquely because of this.
Few frontal attacks, very little blaring in her accusatory arguments. Taraza
was credited with saving the Sisterhood. That silenced much opposition. Taraza
had said Honored Matres were essentially barbarians and their violence, although
not totally deflectable, could be guided into bloody displays. Events had more
or less verified this.
Correct up to a point, Tar. None of us anticipated the extent of their
violence.
Taraza's classical veronica (how apt the bullring image) had aimed the Honored
Matres into such episodes of carnage that the universe was mordant with
potential supporters of their brutalized victims.
How do I defend us?
It was not so much that defensive plans were inadequate. They could become
irrelevant.
That, of course, is what I seek. We must be purified and made ready for a
supreme effort.
Bellonda had sneered at that idea. "For our demise? Is that why we must be
purified?"
Bellonda would be ambivalent when she discovered what Mother Superior planned.
Bellonda-vicious would applaud. Bellonda-Mentat would argue for delay "until a
more propitious moment. "
But I will seek my own peculiar way despite what my Sisters think.
And many Sisters thought Odrade quite the strangest Mother Superior they had
ever accepted. Elevated more with the left hand than with the right. Taraza
Primary. I was there when you died, Tar. No one else to gather your persona.
Elevation by accident?
Many disapproved of Odrade. But when opposition arose, back they went to
"Taraza Primary -- the best Mother Superior in our history."
Amusing! Taraza Within was the quickest to laugh and ask: Why don't you tell
them about my mistakes, Dar? Especially about how I misjudged you.
Odrade chewed reflectively on a bite of sligpork. I'm overdue for a visit to
Sheeana. South into the desert and that soon. Sheeana must be made ready to
replace Tam.
The changing landscape loomed large in Odrade's thoughts. More than fifteen
hundred years of Bene Gesserit occupancy on Chapterhouse. Signs of us
everywhere. Not just in special groves or vineyards and orchards. What it must
be doing to the collective psyche, seeing such changes come over their familiar
land.
The acolyte seated beside Odrade made a soft throat-clearing sound. Was she
about to address Mother Superior? A rare occurrence. The young woman continued
to eat without speaking.
Odrade's thoughts returned to the prospective journey into the desert. Sheeana
must have no forewarning. I must be sure she is the one we need. There were
questions for Sheeana to answer.
Odrade knew what she would find on inspection stops en route. In Sisters, in
plant and animal life, in the very foundations of Chapterhouse, she would see
changes gross and changes subtle, things to wrench at Mother Superior's vaunted
serenity. Even Murbella, never out of the no-ship, sensed these changes.
Only that morning, seated with her back to her console, Murbella had listened
with new attentiveness to Odrade standing over her. Edgy alertness in the
captive Honored Matre. Her voice betrayed doubts and unbalanced judgments.
"All is transient, Mother Superior?"
"That is knowledge impressed on you by Other Memory. No planet, no land or sea,
no part of any land or sea is here forever."
"A morbid thought!" Rejection.
"Wherever we stand, we are only stewards."
"A useless viewpoint." Hesitant, questioning why Mother Superior chose this
moment to say such things.
"I hear Honored Matres talking through you. They gave you greedy dreams,
Murbella."
"So you say!" Deeply resentful.
"Honored Matres think they can buy infinite security: a small planet, you know,
with plenty of subservient population."
Murbella produced a grimace.
"More planets!" Odrade snapped. "Always more and more and more! That's why
they come swarming back."
"Poor pickings in this Old Empire."
"Excellent, Murbella! You're beginning to think like one of us."
"And that makes me a nothing!"
"Neither fish nor fowl, but your own true self? Even there, you're only a
steward. Beware, Murbella! If you think you own something, that's like walking
on quicksand."
This got a puzzled frown. Something would have to be done about the way
Murbella allowed her emotions to play so openly on her face. It was permissible
here, but someday . . .
"So nothing is safely owned. So what!" Bitter, bitter.
"You speak some of the right words but I don't think you've yet found a place in
yourself where you can endure for your lifetime."
"Until an enemy finds me and slaughters me?"
Honored Matre training clings like glue! But she spoke to Duncan the other
night in a way that tells me she is ready. The Van Gogh painting, I do believe,
has sensitized her. I heard it in her voice. I must review that record.
"Who would slaughter you, Murbella?"
"You'll never withstand an Honored Matre attack!"
"I've already stated the basic fact that concerns us: No place is eternally
safe."
"Another of your useless damned lessons!"
In the Acolyte Hall, Odrade recalled she had not found time to review that
comeye record of Duncan and Murbella. A sigh almost escaped her. She covered
it with a cough. Never do to let the young women see disturbance in Mother
Superior.
To the desert and Sheeana! Inspection tour as soon as I can make time for it.
Time!
Again, the acolyte seated beside Odrade made that throat noise. Odrade watched
peripherally -- blond, short black dress trimmed in white -- Intermediate Third
Stage. No movement of the head toward Odrade, no sidelong glances.
This is what I will find on my inspection tour: Fears. And in the landscape,
those things we always see when we run out of time: trees left uncut because
woodcutters have gone -- dragooned into our Scattering, gone to their graves,
gone to unknown places, perhaps even to peonage. Will I see architectural
Fancies becoming attractive because they are incomplete, builders departed? No.
We don't go in much for Fancies.
Other Memory held examples she wished she might find: old buildings more
beautiful because they were unfinished. The builder bankrupt, an owner angered
at his mistress . . . Some things were more interesting because of that: old
walls, old ruins. Time sculpture.
What would Bell say if I ordered a Fancy in my favorite orchard?
The acolyte beside Odrade said: "Mother Superior?"
Excellent! They so seldom find the courage.
"Yes?" Faint questioning. This had better be important. Would she hear?
She heard. "I intrude, Mother Superior, because of the urgency and because I
know your interest in the orchards."
Superb! This acolyte had thick legs but that did not extend to her mind.
Odrade stared at her silently.
"I am the one making the map for your bedchamber, Mother Superior."
So this was a reliable adept, a person trusted with work for Mother Superior.
Even better.
"Will I have my map soon?"
"Two days, Mother Superior. I am adjusting projection overlays where I will
mark the desert's daily growth."
A brief nod. That had been in the original order: an acolyte to keep the map
current. Odrade wanted to awaken each morning, her imagination ignited by that
changing view, the first thing impressed on awareness at arising.
"I put a report in your workroom this morning, Mother Superior. 'Orchard
Management.' Perhaps you did not see it."
Odrade had seen only the label. She had been late coming from exercises,
anxious to visit Murbella. So much depended on Murbella!
"The plantations around Central must either be abandoned or action taken to
sustain them," the acolyte said. "That's the gist of the report."
"Repeat the report verbatim."
Night fell and the room lights brightened as Odrade listened. Concise. Terse
even. The report carried a note of admonishment Odrade recognized as
originating with Bellonda. No Archival signature but Weather's warnings went
through Archives and this acolyte had lifted some of the original words.
The acolyte fell silent, report concluded.
How do I respond? Orchards, pastures and vineyards were not merely a buffer
against alien intrusions, pleasant decorations on the landscape. They supported
Chapterhouse morale and tables.
They support my morale.
How quietly this acolyte waited. Curly blond hair and round face. Pleasing
countenance, though the mouth was wide. Food remained on her plate but she was
not eating. Hands folded in her lap. I am here to serve you, Mother Superior.
While Odrade composed her response, memory intruded -- an old incident
simulflowing over immediate observations. She remembered her ornithopter
training course. Two acolyte students with instructor at midday high over the
wetlands of Lampadas. She had been paired with as inept an acolyte as could
have been accepted by the Sisterhood. Obviously a gene-choice. The Breeding
Mistresses wanted her for a characteristic to be passed along to offspring. It
certainly wasn't emotional balance or intelligence! Odrade remembered the name:
Linchine.
Linchine had shouted at their instructor: "I am going to fly this damned
'thopter!"
And all the while a whirling sky and landscape of trees and marshy lakeshore
dizzied them. That was how it seemed: us stationary and the world moving.
Linchine doing the wrong thing every time. Each movement created worse
gyrations.
The instructor cut her out of the system by pulling the disconnect only he could
reach. He did not speak until they were flying straight and level.
"No way are you ever going to fly this, lady. Not ever! You don't have the
right reactions. You have to begin training those into someone like you before
puberty."
"I am! I am! I'll fly this damned thing." Hands jerking at the useless
controls.
"You're washed out, lady. Grounded!"
Odrade breathed easier, realizing she had known all along that Linchine might
kill them.
Whirling toward Odrade in the rear, Linchine screamed: "Tell him! Tell him he
must obey a Bene Gesserit!"
Addressing the fact that Odrade, several years ahead of Linchine, already
displayed a commanding presence.
Odrade sat in silence, features immobile.
Silence is often the best thing to say, some Bene Gesserit humorist had scrawled
on a washroom mirror. Odrade found that good advice then and later.
Recalling herself to the needs of the acolyte in the dining hall, Odrade
wondered why that old memory had come of itself. Such things seldom happened
without purpose. Not silence now, certainly. Humor? Yes! That was the
message. Odrade's humor (applied later) had taught Linchine something about
herself. Humor under stress.
Odrade smiled at the acolyte beside her in the dining hall. "How would you like
to be a horse?"
"What?" The word was startled out of her but she responded to Mother Superior's
smile. Nothing alarming in that. Warm even. Everyone said Mother Superior
permitted affections.
"You don't understand, of course," Odrade said.
"No, Mother Superior." Still smiling and patient.
Odrade allowed her gaze to quest over the young face. Clear blue eyes not yet
touched by the engulfing blue of Spice Agony. A mouth almost like Bell's but
without the viciousness. Dependable muscles and dependable intelligence. She
would be good at anticipating Mother Superior's needs. Witness her map
assignment and that report. Sensitive. Went with her superior intelligence.
Not likely to rise to the very top but always in key positions where you needed
her qualities.
Why did I sit beside this one?
Odrade frequently selected a particular companion at mealtime visits. Acolytes
mostly. They could be so revealing. Reports often found their way to Mother
Superior's workroom: personal observations from Proctors about one acolyte or
another. But sometimes, Odrade chose a seat for no reason she could explain.
As I did tonight. Why this one?
Conversation rarely occurred unless Mother Superior initiated it. Gentle
initiation usually, easing into more intimate matters. Others around them
listened avidly.
At such moments, Odrade often produced a manner of almost religious serenity.
It soothed nervous ones. Acolytes were . . . well, acolytes, but Mother
Superior was the supreme witch of them all. Nervousness was natural.
Someone behind Odrade whispered: "She has Streggi on the coals tonight."
On the coals. Odrade knew the expression. It had been used in her acolyte
days. So this one was named Streggi. Let it be unspoken for now. Names carry
magic.
"Do you enjoy tonight's dinner?" Odrade asked.
"It's acceptable, Mother Superior." One tried not to give false opinions, but
Streggi was confused by the shift in conversation.
"They've overcooked it," Odrade said.
"Serving so many, how can they please everyone, Mother Superior?"
She speaks her mind and speaks it well.
"Your left hand is trembling," Odrade said.
"I'm nervous with you, Mother Superior. And I've just come from the practice
floor. Very tiring today."
Odrade analyzed the tremors. "They have you doing the long-arm lift."
"Was it painful in your day, Mother Superior?" (In those ancient times?)
"Just as painful as today. Pain teaches, they told me."
That softened things. Shared experiences, the patter of the Proctors.
"I don't understand about horses, Mother Superior." Streggi looked at her
plate. "This cannot be horse meat. I'm sure I . . ."
Odrade laughed loudly, attracting startled looks. She put a hand on Streggi's
arm and subsided to a gentle smile. "Thank you, my dear. No one has made me
laugh that much in years. I hope this is the beginning of a long and joyous
association."
"Thank you, Mother Superior, but I --"
"I will explain about the horse, my own little joke and no intent to demean you.
I want you to carry a young child on your shoulders, to move him more rapidly
than his short legs will carry him."
"As you wish, Mother Superior." No objections, no more questions. Questions
were there, but the answers would come in their own time and Streggi knew it.
Magic time.
Withdrawing her hand, Odrade said: "Your name?"
"Streggi, Mother Superior. Aloana Streggi."
"Rest easy, Streggi. I will see to the orchards. We need them for morale as
much as for food. You report to Reassignment tonight. Tell them I want you in
my workroom at six tomorrow morning."
"I will be there, Mother Superior. Will I continue to mark your map?" As
Odrade was rising to leave.
"For now, Streggi. But ask Reassignment for a new acolyte and begin training
her. Soon, you will be much too busy for the map."