"The old witch will be brought from Buzzell," Logno said. "And her attendants."

"Don't forget about the Futars."

"I have given the orders, Dama."

Oily voice! You'd like to feed me to the herd, wouldn't you, Logno?

"And tighten up security on the cages, Logno. Three more of them escaped last

night. They were wandering around in the garden when I awoke."

"I was told, Dama. More cage guards have been assigned."

"And don't tell me they're harmless without a Handler."

"I do not believe that, Dama."

And that's truth from her, for once. Futars terrify her. Good.

"I believe we have our power base, Logno." Dama turned, noting that Logno had

encroached at least two millimeters into the danger zone. Logno saw it, too,

and retreated. As close as you want in front where I can see you, Logno, but

not behind my back.

Logno saw the orange blaze in Dama's eyes and almost knelt. Definite bending of

the knees. "It is my eagerness to serve you, Dama!"

Your eagerness to replace me, Logno.

"What of that woman from Gammu? Odd name. What was it?"

"Rebecca, Dama. She and some of her companions have . . . ahhh, temporarily

eluded us. We will find them. They cannot get off the planet."

"You think I should have kept her here, don't you?"

"It was wise to think of her as bait, Dama!"

"She's still bait. That witch we found on Gammu did not go to those people by

accident."

"Yes, Dama."

Yes, Dama! But the subservient sound in Logno's voice was enjoyable. "Well,

get on with it!"

Logno scurried away.

There were always those little cells of potential violence meeting secretly

somewhere. Building up their mutual charges of hate, swarming out to disrupt

the orderly lives around them. Someone always had to clean up after those

disruptions. Dama sighed. Terror tactics were so . . . so temporary!

Success, that was the danger. It had cost them an empire. If you waved your

success around like a banner someone always wanted to cut you down. Envy!

We will hold our success more cautiously this time.

She fell into a semi-reverie, still alert to the sounds behind her, but

relishing the evidence of new victories that had been displayed to her this

morning. She liked to roll the names of captive planets silently on her tongue.

Wallach, Kronin, Reenol, Ecaz, Bela Tegeuse, Gammu, Gamont, Niushe . . .

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating

disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the

worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine,

there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.

-The Coda

With Odrade away from Central (and probably only for a short time) Bellonda knew

swift action was required. That damned Mentat-ghola is too dangerous to live!

Mother Superior's party was barely out of sight into the lowering afternoon

before Bellonda was on her way to the no-ship.

Not for Bellonda a thoughtful approach through ring orchards. She ordered space

on a tube, windowless, automatic, and fast. Odrade, too, had observers who

might send unwanted messages.

En route, Bellonda reviewed her assessment of Idaho's many lives, a record she

had kept in Archives ready for quick retrieval. In the original and early

gholas, his character had been dominated by impulsiveness. Quick to hate, quick

to give loyalty. Later Idaho-gholas tempered this with cynicism but the

underlying impulsiveness remained. The Tyrant had called it to action many

times. Bellonda recognized a pattern.

He can be goaded by pride.

His long service to the Tyrant fascinated her. Not only had he been a Mentat

several times but there was evidence he had been a Truthsayer in more than one

incarnation.

Idaho's appearance reflected what she saw in her records. Interesting character

lines, a look around the eyes and a set to his mouth that went with complex

inner development.

Why would Odrade not accept the danger of this man? Bellonda had felt frequent

misgivings when Odrade spoke of Idaho with such flaunting of her emotions.

"He thinks clearly and directly. There's a fastidious cleanliness about his

mind. It's restorative. I like him and I know that's a trivial thing to

influence my decisions."

She admits his influence!

Bellonda found Idaho alone and seated at his console. His attention was fixed

on a linear display she recognized: the no-ship's operational schematics. He

washed the projection when he saw her.

"Hello, Bell. Been expecting you."

He touched his console field and a door opened behind him. Young Teg entered

and took up a position near Idaho, staring silently at Bellonda.

Idaho did not invite her to sit or find a chair for her, forcing her to bring

one from his sleeping chamber and place it facing him. When she was seated, he

turned a look of wary amusement on her.

Bellonda remained taken aback by his greeting. Why did he expect me?

He answered her unspoken question. "Dar projected earlier, told me she was off

to see Sheeana. I knew you'd waste no time getting to me when she was gone."

Simple Mentat projection or . . . "She warned you!"

"Wrong."

"What secrets do you and Sheeana share?" Demanding.

"She uses me the way you want her to use me."

"The Missionaria!"

"Bell! Two Mentats together. Must we play these stupid games?"

Bellonda took a deep breath and sought Mentat mode. Not easy under these

circumstances, that child staring at her, the amusement on Idaho's face. Was

Odrade displaying an unsuspected slyness? Working against a Sister with this

ghola?

Idaho relaxed when he saw Bene Gesserit intensity become that doubled focus of

the Mentat. "I've known for a long time that you want me dead, Bell."

Yes . . . I have been readable in my fears.

It had been very close there, he thought. Bellonda had come to him with death

in mind, a little drama to create "the necessity" all prepared. He entertained

few illusions about his ability to match her in violence. But Bellonda-Mentat

would observe before acting.

"It's disrespectful the way you use our first names," she said, goading.

"Different recognition, Bell. You're no longer Reverend Mother and I'm not 'the

ghola.' Two human beings with common problems. Don't tell me you're unaware of

this."

She glanced around his workroom. "If you expected me why didn't you have

Murbella here?"

"Force her to kill you while protecting me?"

Bellonda assessed this. The damned Honored Matre probably could kill me, but

then . . . "You sent her away to protect her."

"I've a better protector." He gestured at the child.

Teg? A protector? There were those stories from Gammu about him. Does Idaho

know something?

She wanted to ask but did she dare risk diversion? Watchdogs must receive a

clear scenario of danger.

"Him?"

"Would he serve the Bene Gesserit if he saw you kill me?"

When she did not answer, he said: "Put yourself in my place, Bell. I'm a

Mentat caught not only in your trap but in that of the Honored Matres."

"Is that all you are, a Mentat?"

"No. I'm a Tleilaxu experiment but I don't see the future. I'm not a Kwisatz

Haderach. I'm a Mentat with memories of many lives. You, with your Other

Memories -- think about the leverage that gives me."

While he was speaking, Teg came to lean against the console at Idaho's elbow.

The boy's expression was one of curiosity but she saw no fear of her.

Idaho gestured at the projection focus over his head, silver motes dancing there

ready to create their images. "A Mentat sees his relays producing discrepancies

-- winter scenes in summer, sunshine when his visitors have come through rain .

. . Didn't you expect me to discount your little playlets?"

She heard Mentat summation. To that extent, they shared common teaching. She

said: "You naturally told yourself not to minimize the Tao."

"I asked different questions. Things that happen together can have underground

links. What is cause and effect when confronted with simultaneity?"

"You had good teachers."

"And not just in one life."

Teg leaned toward her. "Did you really come here to kill him?"

No sense lying. "I still think he is too dangerous." Let watchdogs argue that!

"But he's going to give me back my memories!"

"Dancers on a common floor, Bell," Idaho said. "Tao. We may not appear to

dance together, may not use the same steps or rhythms but we are seen together."

She began to suspect where he might be leading and wondered if there might be

another way to destroy him.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Teg said.

"Interesting coincidences," Idaho said.

Teg turned to Bellonda. "Maybe you would explain, please?"

"He's trying to tell me we need each other."

"Then why doesn't he say so?"

"It's more subtle than that, boy." And she thought: The record must show me

warning Idaho. "The nose of the donkey doesn't cause the tail, Duncan, no

matter how often you see the beast pass that thin vertical space limiting your

view of it."

Idaho met Bellonda's fixed gaze. "Dar came here once with a sprig of apple

blossoms, but my projection showed harvest time."

"It's riddles, isn't it!" Teg said, clapping his hands.

Bellonda recalled the record of that visit. Precise movements by Mother

Superior. "You didn't suspect a hothouse?"

"Or that she just wanted to please me?"

"Am I supposed to guess?" Teg asked.

After a long silence, Mentat gaze locked to Mentat gaze, Idaho said: "There's

anarchy behind my confinement, Bell. Disagreement in your highest councils."

"There can be deliberation and judgment even in anarchy," she said.

"You're a hypocrite, Bell!"

She drew back as though he had struck her, a purely involuntary movement that

shocked her by the forced reaction. Voice? No . . . something reaching deeper.

She was suddenly terrified of this man.

"I find it marvelous that a Mentat and a Reverend Mother could be such a

hypocrite," he said.

Teg tugged at Idaho's arm. "Are you fighting?"

Idaho brushed the hand away. "Yes, we're fighting."

Bellonda could not tear her gaze from Idaho's. She wanted to turn and flee.

What was he doing? This had gone completely awry!

"Hypocrites and criminals among you?" he asked.

Once more, Bellonda remembered the comeyes. He was playing not only her but the

watchers as well! And doing it with exquisite care. She was suddenly filled

with admiration for his performance but this did not allay her fear.

"I ask why your Sisters tolerate you?" His lips moved with such delicate

precision! "Are you a necessary evil? A source of valuable data and,

occasionally, good advice?"

She found her voice. "How dare you?" Guttural and containing all of her

vaunted viciousness.

"It could be that you strengthen your Sisters." Voice flat, not changing tone

in the slightest. "Weak links create places others must reinforce and that

would strengthen those others."

Bellonda realized she was barely keeping her hold on Mentat mode. Could any of

this be true? Was it possible Mother Superior saw her that way?

"You came with criminal disobedience in mind," he said. "All in the name of

necessity! A little drama for the comeyes, proving you had no other choice."

She found his words restoring Mentat abilities. Did he do that knowingly? She

was fascinated by the need to study his manner as well as his words. Did he

really read her that well? The record of this encounter might be far more

valuable than her little playlet. And the outcome no different!

"You think Mother Superior's wishes are law?" she asked.

"Do you really think me unobservant?" Waving a hand at Teg, who started to

interrupt. "Bell! Be only a Mentat."

"I hear you." And so do many others!

"I'm deep into your problem."

"We've given you no problem!"

"But you have. You have, Bell. You're misers the way you parcel out the pieces

but I see it."

Bellonda abruptly remembered Odrade saying: "I don't need a Mentat! I need an

inventor."

"You . . . need . . . me," Idaho said. "Your problem is still in its shell but

the meat's there and must be extracted."

"Why would we possibly need you?"

"You need my imagination, my inventiveness, things that kept me alive in the

face of Leto's wrath."

"You've said he killed you so many times you lost count." Eat your own words,

Mentat!

He gave her an exquisitely controlled smile, so precise that neither she nor the

comeyes could mistake its intent. "But how can you trust me, Bell?"

He condemns himself!

"Without something new you're doomed," he said. "Only a matter of time and you

all know it. Perhaps not this generation. Perhaps not even the next one. But

inevitably."

Teg pulled sharply at Idaho's sleeve. "The Bashar could help, couldn't he?"

So the boy really listened. Idaho patted Teg's arm. "The Bashar's not enough."

Then to Bellonda: "Underdogs together. Must we growl over the same bone?"

"You've said that before." And doubtless will say it again.

"Still Mentat?" he asked. "Then discard drama! Get the romantic haze off our

problem."

Dar's the romantic! Not me!

"What's romantic," he asked, "about little pockets of Scattered Bene Gesserit

waiting to be slaughtered?"

"You think none will escape?"

"You're seeding the universe with enemies," he said. "You're feeding Honored

Matres!"

She was fully (and only) Mentat then, required to match this ghola ability for

ability. Drama? Romance? The body got in the way of Mentat performance.

Mentats must use the body, not let it interfere.

"No Reverend Mother you've Scattered has ever returned or sent a message," he

said. "You try to reassure yourselves by saying only the Scattered ones know

where they go. How can you ignore the message they send in this other fact?

Why has not one tried to communicate with Chapterhouse?"

He's chiding all of us, damn him! And he's right.

"Have I stated our problem in its most elemental form?"

Mentat questioning!

"Simplest question, simplest projection," she agreed.

"Amplified sexual ecstasy: Bene Gesserit imprint? Are Honored Matres trapping

your people out there?"

"Murbella?" A one-word challenge. Assess this woman you say you love! Does

she know things we should know?

"They're conditioned against raising their own enjoyment to addictive levels but

they are vulnerable."

"She denies there are Bene Gesserit sources in Honored Matre history."

"As she was conditioned to do."

"A lust for power instead?"

"At last, you have asked a proper question." And when she did not reply, he

said: "Mater Felicissima." Addressing her by the ancient term for Bene

Gesserit Council members.

She knew why he did it and felt the word produce the wanted effect. She was

firmly balanced now, Mentat Reverend Mother encompassed by the mohalata of her

own Spice Agony -- that union of benign Other Memory protecting her from

domination by malignant ancestors.

How did he know to do that? Every observer behind the comeyes would be asking

that question. Of course! The Tyrant trained him thus, time and time again.

What do we have here? What is this talent Mother Superior dares employ?

Dangerous, yes, but far more valuable than I suspected. By the gods of our own

creation! Is he the tool to free us?

How calm he was. He knew he had caught her.

"In one of my lives, Bell, I visited your Bene Gesserit house on Wallach IX and

there talked to one of your ancestors, Tersius Helen Anteac. Let her guide you,

Bell. She knows."

Bellonda felt familiar prodding in her mind. How could he know Anteac was my

ancestor?

"I went to Wallach IX at the Tyrant's command," he said. "Oh, yes! I often

thought of him as Tyrant. My orders were to suppress the Mentat school you

thought you had hidden there."

Anteac-simulflow intruded: "I show you now the event of which he speaks."

"Consider," he said. "I, a Mentat, forced to suppress a school that trained

people the way I was trained. I knew why he ordered it, of course, and so do

you."

Simulflow poured it through her awareness: Order of Mentats, founded by

Gilbertus Albans; temporary sanctuary with Bene Tleilax who hoped to incorporate

them into Tleilaxu hegemony; spread into uncounted "seed schools"; suppressed by

Leto II because they formed a nucleus of independent opposition; spread into the

Scattering after the Famine.

"He kept a few of the finest teachers on Dune, but the question Anteac forces

you to confront now does not go there. Where have your Sisters gone, Bell?"

"We have no way of knowing yet, do we?" She looked at his console with new

awareness. It was wrong to block such a mind. If they were to use him, they

must use him fully.

"By the way, Bell," as she stood to leave. "Honored Matres could be a

relatively small group."

Small? Didn't he know how the Sisterhood was being overwhelmed by terrifying

numbers on planet after planet?

"All numbers are relative. Is there something in the universe truly immovable?

Our Old Empire could be a last retreat for them, Bell. A place to hide and try

to regroup."

"You suggested that before . . . to Dar."

Not Mother Superior. Not Odrade. Dar. He smiled. "And perhaps we could help

with Scytale."

"We?"

"Murbella to gather information, I to assess it."

He did not like the smile this produced.

"Precisely what are you suggesting?"

"Let our imaginations roam and fashion our experiments accordingly. Of what use

would even a no-planet be if someone could penetrate the shielding?"

She glanced at the boy. Idaho knew their suspicion that the Bashar had seen the

no-ships? Naturally! A Mentat of his abilities . . . bits and pieces assembled

into a masterful projection.

"It would require the entire output of a G-3 sun to shield any halfway livable

planet." Dry and very cool the way she looked down at him.

"Nothing is out of the question in the Scattering."

"But not within our present capabilities. Do you have something less

ambitious?"

"Review the genetic markers in the cells of your people. Look for common

patterns in Atreides inheritance. There may be talents you have not even

guessed."

"Your inventive imagination bounces around."

"G-3 suns to genetics. There may be common factors."

Why these mad suggestions? No-planets and people for whom prescient shields are

transparent? What is he doing?

She did not flatter herself that he spoke only for her benefit. There were

always the comeyes.

He remained silent, one arm thrown negligently across the boy's shoulders. Both

of them watching her! A challenge?

Be a Mentat if you can!

No-planets? As the mass of an object increased, energy to nullify gravitation

passed thresholds matched to prime numbers. No-shields met even greater energy

barriers. Another magnitude of exponential increase. Was Idaho suggesting that

someone in the Scattering might have found a way around the problem? She asked

him.

"Ixians have not penetrated Holzmann's unification concept," he said. "They

merely use it -- a theory that works even when you don't understand it."

Why does he direct my attention to the technocracy of Ix? Ixians had their

fingers in too many pies for the Bene Gesserit to trust them.

"Aren't you curious why the Tyrant never suppressed Ix?" he asked. And when

she continued to stare at him: "He only bridled them. He was fascinated by the

idea of human and machine inextricably bound to each other, each testing the

limits of the other."

"Cyborgs?"

"Among other things."

Didn't Idaho know the residue of revulsion left by the Butlerian Jihad even

among the Bene Gesserit? Alarming! The convergence of what each -- human and

machine -- could do. Considering machine limitations, that was a succinct

description of Ixian shortsightedness. Was Idaho saying the Tyrant subscribed

to the idea of Machine Intelligence? Foolishness! She turned away from him.

"You're leaving too quickly, Bell. You should be more interested in Sheeana's

immunity to sexual bonding. The young men I send for polishing are not

imprinted and neither is she. Yet no Honored Matre is more of an adept."

Bellonda saw now the value Odrade placed in this ghola. Priceless! And I might

have killed him. This nearness of that error filled her with dismay.

When she reached the doorway, he stopped her once more. "The Futars I saw on

Gammu -- why were we told they hunt and kill Honored Matres? Murbella knows

nothing of this."

Bellonda left without looking back. Everything she had learned about Idaho

today increased his danger . . . but they had to live with it . . . for now.

Idaho took a deep breath and looked at the puzzled Teg. "Thank you for being

here and I do appreciate the fact that you remained silent in the face of great

provocation."

"She wouldn't really have killed you . . . would she?"

"If you had not gained me those first few seconds, she might have."

"Why?"

"She has the mistaken idea that I might be a Kwisatz Haderach."

"Like Muad'Dib?"

"And his son."

"Well, she won't hurt you now."

Idaho looked at the door where Bellonda had gone. Reprieve. That was all he

had achieved. Perhaps he no longer was just a cog in the machinations of

others. They had achieved a new relationship, one that could keep him alive if

carefully exploited. Emotional attachments had never figured in it, not even

with Murbella . . . nor with Odrade. Deep down, Murbella resented sexual

bondage as much as he did. Odrade might hint at ancient ties of Atreides

loyalty but emotions in a Reverend Mother could not be trusted.

Atreides! He looked at Teg, seeing family appearance already beginning to shape

the immature face.

And what have I really achieved with Bell? They no longer were likely to

provide him with false data. He could place a certain reliance in what a

Reverend Mother told him, coloring this by awareness that any human might make

mistakes.

I'm not the only one in a special school. The Sisters are in my school now!

"May I go find Murbella?" Teg asked. "She promised to teach me how to fight

with my feet. I don't think the Bashar ever learned that."

"Who never learned it?"

Head down, abashed. "I never learned it."

"Murbella's on the practice floor. Run along. But let me tell her about

Bellonda."

Schooling in a Bene Gesserit environment never stopped, Idaho thought as he

watched the boy leave. But Murbella was right when she said they were learning

things available only from the Sisters.

This thought stirred misgivings. He saw an image in memory: Scytale standing

behind the field barrier in a corridor. What was their fellow prisoner

learning? Idaho shuddered. Thinking of the Tleilaxu always called up memories

of Face Dancers. And that recalled Face Dancer ability to "reprint" the

memories of anyone they killed. This in its turn filled him with fears of his

visions. Face Dancers?

And I am a Tleilaxu experiment.

This was not something he dared explore with a Reverend Mother or even within

the sight or hearing of one.

He went out in the corridors then and into Murbella's quarters, where he settled

himself in a chair and examined the residue of a lesson she had studied. Voice.

There was the clairtone she used to echo her vocal experiments. The breathing

harness to force prana-bindu responses lay across a chair, carelessly discarded

in a tangle. She had bad habits from Honored Matre days.

Murbella found him there when she returned. She wore skin-tight white leotards

blotched with perspiration and was in a hurry to remove this clothing and make

herself comfortable. He stopped her on her way to the shower, using one of the

tricks he had learned.

"I've discovered some things about the Sisterhood that we didn't know before."

"Tell me!" It was his Murbella demanding this, perspiration glistening on her

oval face, green eyes admiring. My Duncan saw through them again!

"A game where one of the pieces cannot be moved," he reminded her. Let the

comeye watchdogs play with that one! "They not only expect me to help them

create a new religion around Sheeana, our willing participation in their dream,

I'm supposed to be their gadfly, their conscience, making them question their

own excuses for extraordinary behavior."

"Has Odrade been here?"

"Bellonda."

"Duncan! That one is dangerous. You should never see her alone."

"The boy was with me."

"He never said!"

"He obeys orders."

"All right! What happened?"

He gave her a brief account, even to describing Bellonda's facial expressions

and other reactions. (And wouldn't the comeye watchers have great sport with

that!)

Murbella was enraged. "If she harms you I will never again cooperate with any

of them!"

Right on cue, my darling. Consequences! You Bene Gesserit witches should reexamine

your behavior with great care.

"I'm still stinking from the practice floor," she said. "That boy. He is a

quick one. I've never seen a child that bright."

He stood. "Here, I'll scrub you."

In the shower, he helped her out of the sweaty leotards, his hands cool on her

skin. He could see how much she enjoyed his touch.

"So gentle and yet so strong," she whispered.

Gods below! The way she looked at him, as though she could devour him.

For once, Murbella's thoughts of Idaho were free of self-accusation. I remember

no moment when I awakened and said: "I love him!" No, it had wormed its way

into this deeper and deeper addiction until, accomplished fact, it must be

accepted in every living moment. Like breathing . . . or heartbeats. A flaw?

The Sisterhood is wrong!

"Wash my back," she said and laughed when the shower drenched his clothing. She

helped him undress and there in the shower it happened once more: this

uncontrollable compulsion, this male-female mingling that drove away everything

except sensation. Only afterward could she remember and say to herself: He

knows every technique I do. But it was more than technique. He wants to please

me! Dear Gods of Dur! How was I ever this fortunate?

She clung to his neck while he carried her out of the shower and dropped her

still wet onto her bed. She pulled him down beside her and they lay there

quietly, letting their energies rebuild.

Presently, she whispered: "So the Missionaria will use Sheeana."

"Very dangerous."

"Puts the Sisterhood in an exposed position. I thought they always tried to

avoid that."

"From my point of view, it's ludicrous."

"Because they intended you to control Sheeana?"

"No one can control her! Perhaps no one should." He looked up at the comeyes.

"Hey, Bell! You have more than one tiger by the tail."

Bellonda, returning to Archives, stopped at the door of Comeye-Recording and

looked a question at the Watch Mother.

"In the shower again," the Watch Mother said. "It gets boring after a while."

"Participation Mystique!" Bellonda said and strode off to her quarters, her mind

roiling with changed perceptions that needed reorganizing. He's a better Mentat

than I am!

I'm jealous of Sheeana, damn her! And he knows it!

Participation Mystique! The orgy as energizer. Honored Matre sexual knowledge

was having an effect on the Bene Gesserit akin to that primitive submersion in

shared ecstasy. We take one step toward it and one step away.

Just knowing this thing exists! How repellent, how dangerous . . . and yet, how

magnetic.

And Sheeana is immune! Damn her! Why did Idaho have to remind them of that

just now?

Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes

and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go

unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.

-Darwi Odrade

Tamalane appeared in Odrade's quarters at Eldio just before dawn, bringing news

about the glazeway ahead of them.

"Drifting sand has made the road dangerous or impassable in six places beyond

the sea. Very large dunes."

Odrade had just completed her daily regimen: mini-Agony of spice followed by

exercise and cold shower. Eldio's guest sleeping cell had only one slingchair

(they knew her preferences) and she had seated herself to await Streggi and the

morning report.

Tamalane's face appeared sallow in the light of two silvery glowglobes but there

was no mistaking her satisfaction. If you had listened to me in the first

place!

"Get us 'thopters," Odrade said.

Tamalane left, obviously disappointed at Mother Superior's mild reaction.

Odrade summoned Streggi. "Check alternate roads. Find out about passage around

the sea's western end."

Streggi hurried away, almost colliding with Tamalane who was returning.

"I regret to inform you that Transport cannot give us enough 'thopters

immediately. They are relocating five communities east of us. We probably can

have them by noon."

"Isn't there an observation terminal at the edge of that desert spur south of

us?" Odrade asked.

"The first obstruction is just beyond it." Tamalane still was too pleased with

herself.

"Have the 'thopters meet us there," Odrade said. "We will leave immediately

after breakfast."

"But Dar . . ."

"Tell Clairby you are riding with me today. Yes, Streggi?" The acolyte stood

in the doorway behind Tamalane.

The set of her shoulders as she left said Tamalane did not take the new seating

arrangements as forgiveness. On the coals! But Tam's behavior fitted itself to

their need.

"We can get to the observation terminal," Streggi said, indicating she had

heard. "We'll stir up dust and sand but it's safe."

"Let's hurry breakfast."

The closer they came to the desert, the more barren the country, and Odrade

commented on this as they sped south.

Within one hundred klicks of the last reported desert fringe, they saw signs of

communities uprooted and removed to colder latitudes. Bare foundations,

unsalvageable walls damaged in dismantling and left behind. Pipes cut off at

foundation level. Too expensive to dig them out. Sand would cover all of this

unsightly mess before long.

They had no Shield Wall here as there had been on Dune, Odrade observed to

Streggi. Someday soon, the population of Chapterhouse would remove itself to

polar regions and mine the ice for water.

"Is it true, Mother Superior," someone in back with Tamalane asked, "that we're

already making spice-harvesting equipment?"

Odrade turned in her seat. The question had come from a Communications clerk,

senior acolyte: an older woman with responsibility wrinkles deep in her

forehead; dark and squinty from long hours at her equipment.

"We must be ready for the worms," Odrade said.

"If they come," Tamalane said.

"Have you ever walked on the desert, Tam?" Odrade asked.

"I was on Dune." Very short answer.

"But did you go out into open desert?"

"Only to some small drifts near Keen."

"That is not the same." A short answer deserved an equally short rejoinder.

"Other Memory tells me what I need to know." That was for the acolytes.

"It's not the same, Tam. You have to do it yourself. A very curious sensation

on Dune, knowing a worm could come at any instant and consume you."

"I've heard about your Dune . . . exploit."

Exploit. Not "experience." Exploit. Very precise with her censure. Quite

like Tam. "Too much of Bell has rubbed off on her," some will say.

"Walking on that sort of desert changes you, Tam. Other Memory becomes clearer.

It's one thing to tap experiences of a Fremen ancestor. It's quite different

walking there as a Fremen yourself, if only for a few hours."

"I did not enjoy it."

So much for Tam's venturesome spirit, and everyone in the car had seen her in a

bad light. Word would spread.

On the coals, indeed!

But now the shift to Sheeana on the Council (if she suits) would have an easier

explanation.

The observation terminal was a fused expanse of silica, green and glassy with

heat bubbles through it. Odrade stood at the fused edge and noted how grass

below her ended in patches, sand already invading the lower slopes of this once

verdant hill. There were new saltbushes (planted by Sheeana's people, one of

Odrade's entourage said) forming a random gray screen along the encroaching

fingers of desert. A silent war. Chlorophyll-based life fighting a rear-guard

action against the sand.

A low dune lifted above the terminal to her right. Waving for the others not to

follow, she climbed the sandhill, and just beyond its concealing bulk, there was

the desert of memory.

So this is what we are creating.

No signs of habitation. She did not look back at growing things making their

last desperate struggle against invading dunes but kept her attention focused

outward to the horizon. There was the boundary desert dwellers watched.

Anything moving in that dry expanse was potentially dangerous.

When she returned to the others, she kept her gaze for a time on the glazed

surface of the terminal.

The older Communications acolyte came up to Odrade with a request from Weather.

Odrade scanned it. Concise and inescapable. Nothing sudden about the changes

spelled out in these words. They were asking for more ground equipment. This

did not come with the abruptness of an accidental storm but with Mother

Superior's decision.

Yesterday? Did I decide to phase out the sea only yesterday?

She returned the report to the Communications acolyte and looked beyond her at

the sand-marked glaze.

"Request approved." Then: "It saddens me to see all of those buildings gone

back there."

The acolyte shrugged. She shrugged! Odrade felt like striking her. (And

wouldn't that send upsets rumbling through the Sisterhood!)

Odrade turned her back on the woman.

What could I possibly say to her? We have been on this ground five times the

lifetime of our oldest sisters. And this one shrugs.

Yet . . . by some standards, she knew the Sisterhood's installations had barely

reached maturity. Plaz and plasteel tended to maintain an orderly relationship

between buildings and their settings. Fixed in land and memory. Towns and

cities did not submit easily to other forces . . . except to human whims.

Another natural force.

The concept of respect for age was an odd one, she decided. Humans carried it

inborn. She had seen it in the old Bashar when he spoke of his family holdings

on Lernaeus.

"We thought it fitting to keep my mother's decor."

Continuity. Would a revived ghola revive those feelings as well?

This is where my kind have been.

That took on a peculiar patina when "my kind" were blood-related ancestors.

Look how long we Atreides persisted on Caladan, restoring the old castle,

polishing deep carvings in ancient wood. Whole teams of retainers just to keep

the creaking old place at a level of barely tolerable functionalism.

But those retainers had not thought themselves ill used. There had been a sense

of privilege in their labors. Hands that polished the wood almost caressed it.

"Old. Been with the Atreides a long time now."

People and their artifacts. She felt tool sense as a living part of herself.

"I'm better because of this stick in my hand . . . because of this firesharpened

spear to kill my meat . . . because of this shelter against the cold .

. . because of my stone cellar to store our winter food . . . because of this

swift sailing vessel . . . this giant ocean liner . . . this ship of metal and

ceramics that carries me into space . . ."

Those first human venturers into space -- how little they suspected of where the

voyage would extend. How isolated they were in those ancient times! Little

capsules of livable atmosphere linked to cumbersome data sources by primitive

transmission systems. Solitude. Loneliness. Limited opportunity for anything

but surviving. Keep the air washed. Be sure of potable water. Exercise to

prevent the debilitation of weightlessness. Stay active. Healthy mind in a

healthy body. What was a healthy mind, anyway?

"Mother Superior?"

That damned Communications acolyte again!

"Yes?"

"Bellonda says to tell you immediately there has been a messenger from Buzzell.

Strangers came and took all of the Reverend Mothers away."

Odrade whirled. "Her entire message?"

"No, Mother Superior. The strangers are described as commanded by a woman. The

messenger says she had the look of an Honored Matre but was not wearing one of

their robes."

"Nothing from Dortujla or the others?"

"They were not given the opportunity, Mother Superior. The messenger is a

First-Stage acolyte. She came in the small no-ship following explicit orders

from Dortujla."

"Tell Bell that acolyte must not be allowed to leave. She has dangerous

information. I will brief a messenger when I return. It must be a Reverend

Mother. Do you have that?"

"Of course, Mother Superior." Hurt at the suggestion of doubt.

It was happening! Odrade contained her excitement with difficulty.

They have taken the bait. Now . . . are they on the hook?

Dortujla did a dangerous thing depending on an acolyte that way. Knowing

Dortujla, that must be an extremely reliable acolyte. Prepared to kill herself

if captured. I must see this acolyte. She may be ready for the Agony. And

perhaps that's a message Dortujla sends me. It would be like her.

Bell would be incensed, of course. Foolish to depend on someone from a

punishment station!

Odrade summoned a Communications team. "Set up a link with Bellonda."

The portable projector was not as clear as a fixed installation but Bell and her

setting were recognizable.

Sitting at my table as though she owned it. Excellent!

Not giving Bellonda time for one of her outbursts, Odrade said: "Determine if

that messenger acolyte is ready for the Agony."

"She is." Gods below! That was terse for Bell.

"Then see to it. Perhaps she can be our messenger."

"Already have."

"Is she resourceful?"

"Very. "

What in the name of all the devils has happened to Bell? She's acting extremely

odd. Not like her usual self at all. Duncan!

"Oh, and Bell, I want Duncan to have an open link with Archives."

"Did that this morning."

Well, well. Contact with Duncan is having its effect.

"I'll talk to you after I've seen Sheeana."

"Tell Tam she was right."

"About what?"

"Just tell her."

"Very well. I must say, Bell, I couldn't be more satisfied with the way you're

handling matters."

"After the way you've handled me, how could I fail?"

Bellonda was actually smiling as they broke the connection. Odrade turned to

find Tamalane standing behind her.

"Right about what, Tam?"

"That there's more to contacts between Idaho and Sheeana than we've suspected."

Tamalane moved close to Odrade and lowered her voice. "Don't put her in my

chair without discovering what they keep secret."

"I'm aware you knew my intentions, Tam. But . . . am I that transparent?"

"In some things, Dar."

"I'm fortunate to have you as a friend."

"You have other supporters. When the Proctors voted, it was your creativity

that worked for you. 'Inspired' is the way one of' your defenders put it."

"Then you know I'll have Sheeana on the coals quite thoroughly before I make one

of my inspired decisions."

"Of course."

Odrade signaled Communications to remove the projector and went to wait at the

edge of the glassy area.

Creative imagination.

She knew the mixed feelings of her associates.

Creativity!

Always dangerous to entrenched power. Always coming up with something new. New

things could destroy the grip of authority. Even the Bene Gesserit approached

creativity with misgivings. Maintaining an even keel inspired some to shunt

boat-rockers aside. That was an element behind Dortujla's posting. The trouble

was that creative ones tended to welcome backwaters. They called it privacy.

It had taken quite a force to bring Dortujla out.

Be well, Dortujla. Be the best bait we ever used.

The 'thopters came then -- sixteen of them, pilots showing displeasure at this

added assignment after all the trouble they had been through. Moving whole

communities!

In a fragile mood, Odrade watched the 'thopters settle to the hard-glazed

surface, wing fans folding back into pod sleeves -- each craft like a sleeping

insect.

An insect designed in its own likeness by a mad robot.

When they were airborne, Streggi once more seated beside Odrade, Streggi asked:

"Will we see sandworms?"

"Possibly. But there are no reports of them yet."

Streggi sat back, disappointed by the answer but unable to lever it into another

question. Truth could be upsetting at times and they had such high expectations

invested in this evolutionary gamble, Odrade thought.

Else why destroy everything we loved on Chapterhouse?

Simulflow intruded with an image of a long-ago sign arching over a narrow entry

to a pink brick building: HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLE DISEASES.

Was that where the Sisterhood found itself? Or was it that they tolerated too

many failures? Intrusive Other Memory had to have its purpose.

Failures?

Odrade searched it out: If it comes, we must think of Murbella as a Sister.

Not that their captive Honored Matre was an incurable failure. But she was a

misfit and undergoing the deep training at a very late age.

How quiet they were all around her, everyone looking out at windswept sand --

whaleback dunes giving way at times to dry wavelets. Early afternoon sun had

just begun to provide sufficient sidelighting to define near vistas. Dust

obscured the horizon ahead.

Odrade curled up in her seat and slept. I've seen this before. I survived

Dune.

The stir as they came down and circled over Sheeana's Desert Watch Center

awakened her.

Desert Watch Center. We're at it again. We haven't really named it . . . no

more than we gave a name to this planet. Chapterhouse! What kind of a name is

that? Desert Watch Center! Description, not a name. Accent on the temporary.

As they descended, she saw confirmations of her thought. The sense of temporary

housing was amplified by spartan abruptness in all junctures. No softness, no

rounding of any connection. This attaches here and that goes over there. All

joined by removable connectors.

It was a bumpy landing, the pilot telling them that way: "Here you are and good

riddance."

Odrade went immediately to the room always set aside for her and summoned

Sheeana. Temporary quarters: another spartan cubicle with hard cot. Two

chairs this time. A window looked westward onto desert. The temporary nature

of these rooms grated on her. Anything here could be dismantled in hours and

carted away. She washed her face in the adjoining bathroom, getting the most

out of movement. She had slept in a cramped position on the 'thopter and her

body complained.

Refreshed, she went out to a window, thankful that the erection crew had

included this tower: ten floors, and this the ninth. Sheeana occupied the top

floor, a vantage for doing what the name of the place described.

While waiting, Odrade made necessary preparations.

Open the mind. Shed preconceptions.

First impressions when Sheeana arrived must be seen with naive eyes. Ears must

not be prepared for a particular voice. Nose must not expect remembered odors.

I chose this one. I, her first teacher, am susceptible to mistakes.

Odrade turned at a sound from the doorway. Streggi.

"Sheeana has just returned from the desert and is with her people. She asks

Mother Superior to meet her in the upper quarters, which are more comfortable."

Odrade nodded.

Sheeana's quarters on the top floor still had that prefab look at the edges.

Quick shelter ahead of the desert. A large room, six or seven times the size of

the guest cubicle, but then it was both workroom and sleeping chamber. Windows

on two sides -- west and north. Odrade was struck by the mixture of functional

and nonfunctional.

Sheeana had managed to make her rooms reflect herself. A standard Bene Gesserit

cot had been covered with a bright orange and umber spread. A black-on-white

line drawing of a sandworm, head-on with all of its crystal teeth displayed,

filled an end wall. Sheeana had drawn it, relying on Other Memory and her Dune

childhood to guide her hand.

It said something about Sheeana that she had not attempted a more ambitious

rendering -- full color, perhaps, and in traditional desert setting. Just the

worm and a hint of sand beneath it, a tiny robed human in the foreground.

Herself?

Admirable restraint and a constant reminder of why she was here. A deep

impression of nature.

Nature makes no bad art?

It was a statement too glib to accept.

What do we mean by "nature?"

She had seen atrocious natural wilderness: brittle trees looking as though they

had been dipped in faulty green pigment and left on a tundra's edge to dry into

ugly parodies. Repellent. Hard to imagine such trees having any purpose. And

blindworms . . . slimy yellow skins. Where was the art in them? Temporary

stopping place on evolution's journey elsewhere. Did the intervention of humans

always make a difference? Sligs! The Bene Tleilax had produced something

disgusting there.

Admiring Sheeana's drawing, Odrade decided certain combinations offended

particular human senses. Sligs as food were delectable. Ugly combinations

touched early experiences. Experiences judged.

Bad thing!

Much of what we think of as ART caters to desires for reassurance. Don't offend

me! I know what I can accept.

How did this drawing reassure Sheeana?

Sandworm: blind power guarding hidden riches. Artistry in mystic beauty.

It was reported that Sheeana joked about her assignment. " I am shepherd to

worms that may never exist."

And even if they did appear, it would be years before any achieved the size

indicated by her drawing. Was it her voice from the tiny figure in front of the

worm?

"This will come in time."

An odor of melange pervaded the room, stronger than usual in a Reverend Mother's

quarters. Odrade passed a searching look across the furnishings: chairs,

worktable, illumination from anchored glowglobes -- everything placed where it

would serve to advantage. But what was that oddly shaped mound of black plaz in

the corner? More of Sheeana's work?

These rooms fitted Sheeana, Odrade decided. Little other than the drawing to

recall her origins but the view out any window might have been from Dar-es-Balat

deep in Dune's drylands.

A small rustling sound at the doorway alerted Odrade. She turned and there was

Sheeana. Almost shy the way she peered around the door before entering Mother

Superior's presence.

Motion as words: "So she did come to my rooms. Good. Someone might have been

careless with my invitation."

Odrade's readied senses tingled with Sheeana's presence. The youngest-ever

Reverend Mother. You often thought of Quiet Little Sheeana. She was not always

quiet nor was she small but the label stuck. She was not even mousy, but

frequently quiet like a rodent waiting at the edge of a field for the farmer to

leave. Then the mouse would come darting out to glean fallen grains.

Sheeana came fully into the room and stopped less than a pace from Odrade.

"We've been too long apart, Mother Superior."

Odrade's first impression was oddly jumbled.

Candor and concealment?

Sheeana stood quietly receptive.

This descendant of Siona Atreides had developed an interesting face under the

Bene Gesserit patina. Maturity working on her according to both Sisterhood and

Atreides designs. Marks of many decisions firmly taken. The slender, darkskinned

waif with sun-streaked brown hair had become this poised Reverend

Mother. Skin still dark from long hours in the open. Hair still sun-streaked.

The eyes, though -- the steely total blue that said: "I have been through the

Agony."

What is it I sense in her?

Sheeana saw the look on Odrade's face (Bene Gesserit naivete!) and knew this was

the long-feared confrontation.

There can be no defense except my truth and I hope she stops short of a full

confession!

Odrade watched her former student with exquisite care, every sense open.

Fear! What do I sense? Something when she spoke?

The steadiness of Sheeana's voice had been shaped into the powerful instrument

Odrade had anticipated at their first meeting. Sheeana's original nature (a

Fremen nature if there ever was one!) had been curbed and redirected. That core

of vindictiveness smoothed out. Her capacity for love and hatred brought under

tight reins.

Why do I get the impression she wants to hug me?

Odrade felt suddenly vulnerable.

This woman has been inside my defenses. No way to exclude her totally ever

again.

Tamalane's judgment came to mind: "She is one of those who keeps herself to

herself. Remember Sister Schwangyu? Like that one but better at it. Sheeana

knows where she is going. We'll have to watch her carefully. Atreides blood,

you know."

"I'm Atreides, too, Tam."

"Don't think we ever forget it! You think we'd just stand idly by if Mother

Superior chose to breed on her own? There are limits to our tolerance, Dar."

"Indeed, this visit is long overdue, Sheeana."

Odrade's tone alerted Sheeana. She stared back suddenly with that look the

Sisterhood called "BG placid," than which there probably was nothing more placid

in the universe, nothing more completely a mask of what occurred behind it.

This was not just a barrier, it was a nothing. Anything on this mask would be

transgression. This, in itself, was betrayal. Sheeana realized it immediately

and responded with laughter.

" I knew you would come probing! The hand-talk with Duncan, right?" Please,

Mother Superior! Accept this.

"All of it, Sheeana."

"He wants someone to rescue them if Honored Matres attack."

"That's all?" Does she think me a complete fool?

"No. He wants information about our intentions . . . and what we're doing to

meet the Honored Matre threat."

"What have you told him?"

"Everything I could." Truth is my only weapon. I must divert her!

"Are you his friend at court, Sheeana?"

"Yes!"

"So am I."

"But not Tam and Bell?"

"My informants tell me Bell now tolerates him."

"Bell? Tolerant?"

"You misjudge her, Sheeana. It's a flaw in you." She is hiding something.

What have you done, Sheeana?

"Sheeana, do you think you could work with Bell?"

"Because I tease her?" Work with Bell? What does she mean? Not Bell to head

that damnable Missionaria project!

A faint twitching lifted the corners of Odrade's mouth. Another prank? Could

that be it?

Sheeana was a prime gossip subject in Central's dining rooms. Stories of how

she teased Breeding Mistresses (especially Bell) and elaborately detailed

accounts of seductions fleshed out with Honored Matre comparisons from Murbella

spiced more than the food. Odrade had heard snatches of the latest story only

two days ago. "She said, 'I used the Let-him-misbehave method. Very effective

with men who think they're leading you down the garden path.' "

"Tease? Is that what you do, Sheeana?"

"An appropriate word: reshape by going against the natural inclination." The

instant the words were out of her mouth, Sheeana knew she had made a mistake.

Odrade felt warning stillness. Reshape? Her gaze went to that odd black mound

in the corner. She stared at it with a fixity that surprised her. It drank

vision. She kept probing for coherence, something that spoke to her. Nothing

responded, not even when she probed to her limits. And that's its purpose!

"It's called 'Void,' " Sheeana said.

"Yours?" Please, Sheeana. Say someone else did it. The one who did this has

gone where I cannot follow.

"I did it one night about a week ago."

Is black plaz the only thing you reshape? "A fascinating comment on art in

general."

"And not on art specific?"

" I have a problem with you, Sheeana. You alarm some Sisters." And me.

There's a wild place in you we have not found. Atreides gene markers Duncan

told us to seek are in your cells. What have they given you?

"Alarm my Sisters?"

"Especially when they recall that you're the youngest ever to survive the

Agony."

"Except for Abominations."

"Is that what you are?"

"Mother Superior!" She has never deliberately hurt me except as a lesson.

"You went through the Agony as an act of disobedience."

"Wouldn't you say rather that I went against mature advice?" Humor sometimes

distracts her.

Prester, Sheeana's acolyte aide, came to the door and rapped lightly on the wall

beside it until she had their attention. "You said I was to tell you

immediately when the search teams returned."

"What do they report?"

Relief in Sheeana's voice?

"Team eight wants you to look at their scans."

"They always want that!"

Sheeana spoke with forced frustration. "Do you want to look at the scans with

me, Mother Superior?"

"I'll wait here."

"This won't take long."

When they had gone, Odrade went to the western window: a clear view across

rooftops to the new desert. Small dunes here. Almost sunset and that dry heat

so reminiscent of Dune.

What is Sheeana hiding?

A young man, hardly more than a boy, had been sunning nude on a neighboring

rooftop, face-up on a sea-green mattress with a golden towel across his face.

His skin was a sun-warmed gold to match towel and pubic hair. A breeze touched

a corner of the towel and lifted it. One languid hand came up and restored the

cover.

How can he be idle? Night worker? Probably.

Idleness was not encouraged and this was flaunting it. Odrade smiled to

herself. Anyone could be excused for assuming he was a night worker. He might

be depending on that specific guess. The trick would be to remain unseen by

those who knew otherwise.

I will not ask. Intelligence deserves some rewards. And, after all, he could

be a night worker.

She lifted her gaze. A new pattern emerging here: exotic sunsets. Narrow band

of orange drawn along the horizon, bulging where the sun had just dipped below

the land. Silvery blue above the orange went darker overhead. She had seen

this many times on Dune. Meteorological explanations she did not care to

explore. Better to let eyes absorb this transient beauty; better to permit ears

and skin to feel sudden stillness descend upon this land in the quick darkness

after the orange vanished.

Faintly, she saw the young man pick up mattress and towel and vanish behind a

ventilator.

A sound of running in the corridor behind her. Sheeana entered almost

breathless. "They found a spice mass thirty klicks northeast of us! Small but

compact!"

Odrade did not dare hope. "Could it be wind accumulation?"

"Not likely. I've set a round-the-clock watch on it." Sheeana glanced at the

window where Odrade stood. She has seen Trebo. Perhaps . . .

"I asked you earlier, Sheeana, if you could work with Bell. It was an important

question. Tam is getting very old and must be replaced soon. There must be a

vote, of course."

"Me?" It was totally unexpected.

"My first choice." Imperative now. I want you close where I can keep watch on

you.

"But I thought . . . I mean, the Missionaria's plan . . ."

"That can wait. And there must be someone else who can shepherd worms . . . if

that spice mass is what we hope."

"Oh? Yes . . . several of our people but no one who . . . Don't you want me to

test whether the worms still respond to me?"

"Work on the Council should not interfere with that."

" I . . . you can see I'm surprised."

"I would have said shocked. Tell me, Sheeana, what really interests you these

days?"

Still probing. Trebo, serve me now! "Making sure the desert grows well."

Truth! "And my sex life, of course. You saw the young man on the roof next

door? Trebo, a new one Duncan sent me for polishing."

Even after Odrade had gone, Sheeana wondered why those words had aroused such

merriment. Mother Superior had been deflected, though.

No need even to waste her fallback position -- truth: "We've been discussing

the possibility that I might imprint Teg and restore the Bashar's memories that

way."

Full confession avoided. Mother Superior did not learn that I have weasled out

the way to reactivate our no-ship prison and defuse the mines Bellonda put in

it.

No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it

out. That's what our earliest ancestors did.

-The Coda

Murbella found herself arising in the night to continue a dream although quite

awake and aware of her surroundings: Duncan asleep beside her, faint ticking of

machinery, the chronoprojection on the ceiling. She insisted on Duncan's

presence at night lately, fearful when alone. He blamed the fourth pregnancy.

She sat on the edge of the bed. The room was ghostly in the dim light of the

chrono. Dream images persisted.

Duncan grumbled and rolled toward her. An outflung arm draped itself across her

legs.

She felt that this mental intrusion was not dreamstuff but it had some of those

characteristics. Bene Gesserit teachings did this. Them and their damned

suggestions about Scytale and . . . and everything! They precipitated motion

she could not control.

Tonight, she was lost in an insane world of words. The cause was clear.

Bellonda that morning had learned Murbella spoke nine languages and had aimed

the suspicious acolyte down a mental path called "Linguistic Heritage." But

Bell's influence on this nighttime madness provided no escape.

Nightmare. She was a creature of microscopic size trapped in an enormous

echoing place labeled in giant letters wherever she turned: "Data Reservoir."

Animated words with grimacing jaws and fearsome tentacles surrounded her.

Predatory beasts and she was their prey!

Awake and knowing she sat on the edge of her bed with Duncan's arm on her legs,

she still saw the beasts. They herded her backward. She knew she was going

backward although her body did not move. They pressed her toward a terrible

disaster she could not see. Her head would not turn! Not only did she see

these creatures (they hid parts of her sleeping chamber) but she heard them in a

cacophony of her nine languages.

They will tear me apart!

Although she could not turn, she sensed what lay behind her: more teeth and

claws. Threat all around! If they cornered her, they would pounce and she was

doomed.

Done for. Dead. Victim. Torture-captive. Fair game.

Despair filled her. Why would Duncan not awaken and save her? His arm was a

lead weight, part of the force holding her and allowing these creatures to herd

her into their bizarre trap. She trembled. Perspiration poured from her body.

Awful words! They united into giant combinations. A creature with knife-fanged

mouth came directly toward her and she saw more words in the gaping blackness

between its jaws.

See above.

Murbella began to laugh. She had no control of it. See above. Done for.

Dead. Victim . . .

The laughter awakened Duncan. He sat up, activated a low glowglobe, and stared

at her. How tousled he looked after their earlier sexual collision.

His expression hovered between amusement and upset at being awakened. "Why are

you laughing?"

Laughter subsided in gasps. Her sides ached. She was afraid his tentative

smile would ignite a new spasm. "Oh . . . oh! Duncan! Sexual collision!"

He knew this was their mutual term for the addiction that bound them but why

would it make her laugh?

His puzzled expression struck her as ludicrous.

Between gasps, she said: "Two more words." And she had to clamp her mouth

closed to prevent another outburst.

"What?"

His voice was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She thrust a hand at him

and shook her head. "Ohhh . . . ohhh . . ."

"Murbella, what's wrong with you?"

She could only continue shaking her head.

He tried a tentative smile. It gentled her and she leaned against him. "No!"

When his right hand wandered. " I just want to be close."

"Look what time it is." He lifted his chin toward the ceiling projection.

"Almost three."

"It was so funny, Duncan."

"So tell me about it."

"When I catch my breath."

He eased her down onto her pillow. "We're like a damned old married couple.

Funny stories in the middle of the night."

"No, darling, we're different."

"A question of degree, nothing else."

"Quality," she insisted.

"What was so funny?"

She recounted her nightmare and Bellonda's influence.

"Zensunni. Very ancient technique. The Sisters use it to rid you of trauma

connections. Words that ignite unconscious responses."

Fear returned.

"Murbella, why are you trembling?"

"Honored Matre teachers warned us terrible things would happen if we fell into

Zensunni hands."

"Bullcrap! I went through the same thing as a Mentat."

His words conjured another dream fragment. A beast with two heads. Both mouths

open. Words in there. On the left, "One word" and on the right, "leads to

another."

Mirth displaced fear. It subsided without laughter. "Duncan!"

"Mmmmmmm." Mentat distance in the sound.

"Bell said the Bene Gesserit use words as weapons -- Voice. 'Tools of control,'

she called them."

"A lesson you must learn almost as instinct. They'll never trust you into the

deeper training until you learn this."

And I won't trust you afterward.

She rolled away from him and looked at the comeyes glittering in the ceiling

around the time projection.

I'm still on probation.

She was aware her teachers discussed her privately. Conversations were choked

off when she approached. They stared at her in their special way, as though she

were an interesting specimen.

Bellonda's voice cluttered her mind.

Nightmare tendrils. Midmorning then and the sweat of her own exertions a stink

in her nostrils. Probationer a dutiful three paces from Reverend Mother.

Bell's voice:

"Never be an expert. That locks you up tight."

All of this because I asked if there were no words to guide the Bene Gesserit.

"Duncan, why do they mix mental and physical teaching?"

"Mind and body reinforce each other." Sleepy. Damn him! He's going back to

sleep.

She shook Duncan's shoulder. "If words are so damned unimportant, why do they

talk about disciplines so much?"

"Patterns," he mumbled. "Dirty word."

"What?" She shook him more roughly.

He turned onto his back, moving his lips, then: "Discipline equals pattern

equals bad way to go. They say we're all natural pattern creators . . . means

'order' to them, I think."

"Why is that so bad?"

"Gives others handle to destroy us or traps us in . . . in things we won't

change."

"You're wrong about mind and body."

"Hmmmmph?"

"It's pressures locking one to the other."

"Isn't that what I said? Hey! Are we going to talk or sleep or what?"

"No more 'or what.' Not tonight."

A deep sigh lifted his chest.

"They're not out to improve my health," she said.

"Nobody said they were."

"That comes later, after the Agony." She knew he hated reminders of that deadly

trial but there was no avoiding it. The prospect filled her mind.

"All right!" He sat up, punched his pillow into shape and leaned back against

it to study her. "What's up?"

"They're so damned clever with their word-weapons! She brought Teg to you and

said you were fully responsible for him."

"You don't believe it?"

"He thinks of you as his father."

"Not really."

"No, but . . . did you think that about the Bashar?"

"When he restored my memories? Yeah."

"You're a pair of intellectual orphans, always looking for parents who aren't

there. He hasn't the faintest idea of how much you will hurt him."

"That tends to split up the family."

"So you hate the Bashar in him and you're glad you'll hurt him."

"Didn't say that."

"Why is he so important?"

"The Bashar? Military genius. Always doing the unexpected. Confounds his foes

by appearing where they never expect him to be."

"Can't anyone do that?"

"Not the way he does it. He invents tactics and strategies. Just like that!"

Snapping his fingers.

"More violence. Just like Honored Matres."

"Not always. Bashar had a reputation for winning without battle."

"I've seen the histories."

"Don't trust them."

"But you just said . . ."

"Histories focus on confrontations. Some truth in that but it hides more

persistent things that go on in spite of upheavals."

"Persistent things?"

"What history touches the woman in the rice paddy driving her water buffalo

ahead of her plow while her husband is off somewhere, most likely a conscript,

carrying a weapon?"

"Why is that persistent and more important than . . ."

"Her babies at home need food. Man's away on this perennial madness? Someone

has to do the plowing. She's a true image of human persistence."

"You sound so bitter . . . I find that odd."

"Considering my military history?"

"That, yes, the Bene Gesserit emphasis on . . . on their Bashar and elite troops

and . . ."

"You think they're just more self-important people going on about their selfimportant

violence? They'll ride right over the woman with her plow?"

"Why not?"

"Because very little escapes them. The violent ones ride past the plowing woman

and seldom see they have touched basic reality. A Bene Gesserit would never

miss such a thing."

"Again, why not?"

"The self-important have limited vision because they ride a death-reality.

Woman and plow are life-reality. Without life-reality there'd be no humankind.

My Tyrant saw this. The Sisters bless him for it even while they curse him."

"So you're a willing participant in their dream."

"I guess I am." He sounded surprised.

"And you're being completely honest with Teg?"

"He asks, I give him candid answers. I don't believe in doing violence to

curiosity."

"And you have full responsibility for him?"

"That isn't exactly what she said."

"Ahhhhh, my love. Not exactly what she said. You call Bell hypocrite and don't

include Odrade. Duncan, if you only knew . . ."

"As long as we're ignoring the comeyes, spit it out!"

"Lies, cheating, vicious . . ."

"Hey! The Bene Gesserit?"

"They have that hoary old excuse: Sister A does it so if I do it that's not so

bad. Two crimes cancel each other."

"What crimes?"

She hesitated. Should I tell him? No. But he expects some answer. "Bell's

delighted the roles are reversed between you and Teg! She's looking forward to

his pain."

"Maybe we should disappoint her." He knew it was a mistake to say this as soon

as it was out. Too soon.

"Poetic justice!" Murbella was delighted.

Divert them! "They aren't interested in justice. Fairness, yes. They have

this homily: 'Those against whom judgment is passed must accept the fairness of

it.' "

"So they condition you to accept their judgment."

"There are loopholes in any system."

"You know, darling, acolytes learn things."

"That's why they're acolytes."

"I mean we talk to one another."

"We? You're an acolyte? You're a proselyte!"

"Whatever I am, I've heard stories. Your Teg may not be what he seems."

"Acolyte gossip."

"There are stories out of Gammu, Duncan."

He stared at her. Gammu? He could never think of it by any name other than the

original: Giedi Prime. Harkonnen hell hole.

She took his silence as an invitation to continue. "They say Teg moved faster

than the eye could see, that he . . ."

"Probably started those stories himself."

"Some Sisters don't discount them. They're taking a wait-and-see attitude.

They want precautions."

"Haven't you learned anything about Teg from your precious histories? It would

be typical of him to start such rumors. Make people cautious."

"But remember I was on Gammu then. Honored Matres were very upset. Enraged.

Something went wrong."

"Sure. Teg did the unexpected. Surprised them. Stole one of their no-ships."

He patted the wall beside him. "This one."

"The Sisterhood has its forbidden ground, Duncan. They're always telling me to

wait for the Agony. All will become clear! Damn them!"

"Sounds like they're preparing you for the Missionaria teaching. Engineer

religions for specific purposes and selected populations."

"You don't see anything wrong in that?"

"Morality. I don't argue that with Reverend Mothers."

"Why not?"

"Religions founder on that rock. BGs don't founder."

Duncan, if you only knew their morality! "It annoys them that you know so much

about them."

"Bell only wanted to kill me because of it."

"You don't think Odrade is just as bad?"

"What a question!" Odrade? A terrifying woman if you let yourself dwell on her

abilities. Atreides, for all that. I've known Atreides and Atreides. This one

is Bene Gesserit first. Teg's the Atreides ideal.

"Odrade told me she trusts your loyalty to the Atreides."

"I'm loyal to Atreides honor, Murbella." And I make my own moral decisions --

about the Sisterhood, about this child they've thrust into my care, about

Sheeana and . . . and about my beloved.

Murbella bent close to him, breast brushing his arm, and whispered in his ear:

"Sometimes, I could kill any of them within my reach!"

Does she think they can't hear? He sat upright, dragging her with him. "What's

set you off?"

"She wants me to work on Scytale."

Work on. Honored Matre euphemism. Well, why not? She "worked on" plenty of

men before she ran afoul of me. But he had an antique husband's reaction. Not

only that . . . Scytale? A damned Tleilaxu?

"Mother Superior?" He had to be sure.

"The one, the only." Almost lighthearted now that she had unburdened herself.

"What's your reaction?"

"She says it was your idea."

"My . . . No way! I suggested we could try to pry information out of him but .

. ."

"She says it's an ordinary thing for the Bene Gesserit just as it is with

Honored Matres. Go breed with this one. Seduce that one. All in a day's

work."

"I asked for your reaction."

"Revolted."

"Why?" Knowing your background . . .

"It's you I love, Duncan and . . . and my body is . . . is to give you pleasure

. . . just as you . . ."

"We're an old married couple and the witches are trying to pry us apart."

His words ignited in him a clear vision of Lady Jessica, lover of his long-dead

Duke and mother of Muad'Dib. I loved her. She didn't love me but . . . The

look he saw now in Murbella's eyes, he had seen Jessica look at the Duke that

way: blind, unswerving love. The thing the Bene Gesserit distrusted. Jessica

had been softer than Murbella. Hard to the core, though. And Odrade . . . she

was hard at the beginning. Plasteel all the way.

Then what of the times when he had suspected her of sharing human emotions? The

way she spoke of the Bashar when they learned the old man was dead on Dune.

"He was my father, you know."

Murbella dragged him out of reverie. "You may share their dream, whatever that

is, but . . ."

"Grow up, humans!"

"What?"

"That's their dream. Start acting like adults and not like angry children in a

schoolyard."

"Mama knows best?"

"Yes . . . I believe she does."

"Is that how you really see them? Even when you call them witches?"

"It's a good word. Witches do mysterious things."

"You don't believe it's the long and severe training plus the spice and the

Agony?"

"What's belief have to do with it? Unknowns create their own mystique."

"But you don't think they trick people into doing what they want?"

"Sure they do!"

"Words as weapons, Voice, Imprinters . . ."

"None as beautiful as you."

"What's beauty, Duncan?"

"There're styles in beauty, sure."

"Exactly what she says. 'Styles based on procreative roots buried so deeply in

our racial psyche we dare not remove them.' So they've thought of meddling

there, Duncan."

"And they might dare anything?"

"She says, 'We won't distort our progeny into what we judge to be non-human.'

They judge, they condemn."

He thought of the alien figures in his vision. Face Dancers. And he asked:

"Like the amoral Tleilaxu? Amoral -- not human."

"I can almost hear the gears whirling in Odrade's head. She and her Sisters --

they watch, they listen, they tailor every response, everything calculated."

Is that what you want, my darling? He felt trapped. She was right and she was

wrong. Ends justifying means? How could he justify losing Murbella?

"You think them amoral?" he asked.

It was as though she did not hear. "Always asking themselves what to say next

to get the desired response."

"What response?" Couldn't she hear his pain?

"You never know until too late!" She turned and looked at him.

"Exactly like Honored Matres. Do you know how Honored Matres trapped me?"

He could not suppress awareness of how avidly the watchdogs would hang on

Murbella's next words.

"I was picked off the streets after an Honored Matre sweep. I think the whole

sweep was because of me. My mother was a great beauty but she was too old for

them."

"A sweep?" The watchdogs would want me to ask.

"They go through an area and people disappear. No bodies, nothing. Whole

families vanish. It's explained as punishment because people plot against

them."

"How old were you?"

"Three . . . maybe four. I was playing with friends in an open place under

trees. Suddenly, there was a lot of noise and shouting. We hid in a hole

behind some rocks."

He was caught in a vision of this drama.

"The ground shook." Her gaze went inward with the memory. "Explosions. After

a while it was quiet and we peeked out. The whole corner where my house had

been was a hole."

"You were orphaned?"

"I remember my parents. He was a big, robust fellow. I think my mother was a

servant somewhere. They wore uniforms for such jobs and I remember her in

uniform."

"How can you be sure your parents were killed?"

"The sweep is all I know for sure but they're always the same. There was

screaming and people running about. We were terrified."

"Why do you think the sweep was because of you?"

"They do that sort of thing."

They. What a victory the watchers would count in that one word.

Murbella was still deep in memory. "I think my father refused to succumb to an

Honored Matre. That was always considered dangerous. Big, handsome man . . .

strong."

"So you hate them."

"Why?" Really surprised by his question. "Without that, I would never have

been an Honored Matre."

Her callousness shocked him. "So it was worth anything!"

"Love, do you resent whatever brought me to your side?"

Touche! "But don't you wish it had happened some other way?"

"It happened."

What utter fatalism. He had never suspected this in her. Was it Honored Matre

conditioning or something the Bene Gesserit did?

"You were just a valuable addition to their stables."

"Right. Enticers, they called us. We recruited valuable males."

"And you did."

"I repaid their investment many times over."

"Do you realize how the Sisters will interpret this?"

"Don't make a big thing of it."

"So you're ready to work on Scytale?"

"I didn't say that. Honored Matres manipulated me without my consent. The

Sisters need me and want to use me the same way. My price may be too high."

He was a moment speaking past a dry throat. "Price?"

She glared at him. "You, you're just part of my price. No working on Scytale.

And more of their famous candor about why they need me!"

"Careful, love. They might tell you."

She turned an almost Bene Gesserit stare toward him. "How could you restore

Teg's memories without pain?"

Damn! And just when he thought they were free of that slip. No escape. He

could see in her eyes that she guessed.

Murbella confirmed this. "Since I would not agree, I'm sure you've discussed it

with Sheeana."

He could only nod. His Murbella had gone farther into the Sisterhood than he

suspected. And she knew how his multiple ghola memories had been restored by

her imprinting. He suddenly saw her as a Reverend Mother and wanted to cry out

against it.

"How does this make you different from Odrade?" she asked.

"Sheeana was trained as an Imprinter." His words felt empty even as he spoke.

"That's different from my training?" Accusing.

Anger flared in him. "You'd prefer the pain? Like Bell?"

"You'd prefer the defeat of the Bene Gesserit?" Voice milky soft.

He heard the distance in her tone, as though she already had retreated into the

cold observational stance of the Sisterhood. They were freezing his lovely

Murbella! There was still that vitality in her, though. It tore at him. She

gave off an aura of health, especially in pregnancy. Vigor and boundless

enjoyment of life. It glowed in her. The Sisters would take that and dampen

it.

She became quiet under his watchful stare.

Desperate, he wondered what he could do.

" I had hoped we were being more open with each other lately," she said.

Another Bene Gesserit probe.

"I disagree with many of their actions but I don't distrust their motives," he

said.

"I'll know their motives if I live through the Agony."

He went very still, caught in realization that she might not survive. Life

without Murbella? Yawning emptiness deeper than anything he had ever imagined.

Nothing in his many lives compared with it. Without conscious volition, he

reached out and caressed her back. Skin so soft and yet resilient.

"I love you too much, Murbella. That's my Agony."

She trembled under his touch.

He found himself wallowing in sentimentality, building an image of grief until

he recalled a Mentat teacher's words about "emotional binges."

"The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When you

avoid killing somebody's pet on the glazeway, that's sentiment. If you swerve

to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, that is

sentimentality."

She took his caressing hand and pressed it against her lips.

"Words plus body, more than either," he whispered.

His words plunged her back into nightmare but now she went with a vengeance,

aware of words as tools. She was filled with special relish for the experience,

willingness to laugh at herself.

As she exorcised the nightmare, it occurred to her that she had never seen an

Honored Matre laugh at herself.

Holding his hand, she stared down at Duncan. Mentat flickering of his eyelids.

Did he realize what she had just experienced? Freedom! It no longer was a

question of how she had been confined and driven into inevitable channels by her

past. For the first time since accepting the possibility that she could become

a Reverend Mother, she glimpsed what it might mean. She felt awe and shock.

Nothing more important than the Sisterhood?

They spoke of an oath, something more mysterious than the Proctor's words at the

acolyte initiation.

My oath to Honored Matres was only words. An oath to the Bene Gesserit can be

no more.

She remembered Bellonda growling that diplomats were chosen for ability to lie.

"Would you be another diplomat, Murbella?"

It was not that oaths were made to be broken. How childish! Schoolyard threat:

"If you break your word, I'll break mine! Nyaa, nyaa, nyaaaaa!"

Futile to worry about oaths. Far more important to find that place in herself

where freedom lived. It was a place where something always listened.

Cupping Duncan's hand against her lips, she whispered: "They listen. Oh, how

they listen."

Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a

religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or

if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has

long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation.

Science is so obviously manmade. Fanatics (and many are fanatic on one subject

or another) must know where you stand, but more important, must recognize who

whispers in your ear.

-Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching

The flow of time nagged at Odrade as much as did constant awareness of the

hunters approaching. Years passed so quickly that days became a blur. Two

months of arguments to gain approval of Sheeana as successor to Tam!

Bellonda had taken to standing day watch when Odrade was absent as she had been

today, briefing a new Bene Gesserit remnant being sent Scattering. The Council

continued this but with reluctance. Idaho's suggestion that it was a futile

strategy had sent shock waves through the Sisterhood. Briefings now carried new

defensive plans for "what you may encounter."

When Odrade entered the workroom late in the afternoon, Bellonda sat at the

table. Her cheeks looked puffy and her eyes had that hard stare they got when

she suppressed fatigue. With Bell here, the daily summation would include sharp

comments.

"They've approved Sheeana," she said, pushing a small crystal toward Odrade.

"Tam's support did it. And Murbella's new one will be born in eight days, so

the Suks claim."

Bell had little faith in Suk doctors.

New one? She could be so damned impersonal about life! Odrade found her pulses

quickening at the prospect.

When Murbella recovers from this birth -- the Agony. She is ready.

"Duncan's extremely nervous," Bellonda said, vacating the chair.

Duncan yet! Those two are getting remarkably familiar.

Bell was not finished. "And before you ask, no word from Dortujla. "

Odrade took her seat behind the table and balanced the report crystal on her

palm. Dortujla's trusted acolyte, now Reverend Mother Fintil, would not risk

the no-ship journey or any of the other message devices they had prepared just

to stroke a Mother Superior. No news meant the bait was still out there . . .

or wasted.

"Have you told Sheeana she's confirmed?" Odrade asked.

" I left that for you. She's late with her daily report again. Not right for

someone on the Council."

So Bell still disapproved the appointment.

Sheeana's daily messages had taken on a repetitious note. "No wormsign. Spice

mass intact."

Everything upon which they pinned their hopes lay in terrible suspension. And

nightmare hunters crept closer. Tensions accumulated. Explosive.

"You've seen that exchange between Duncan and Murbella enough times," Bellonda

said. "Is that what Sheeana was hiding and, if so, why?"

"Teg was my father."

"Such delicacy! A Reverend Mother has qualms about imprinting the ghola of

Mother Superior's father!"

"She was my personal student, Bell. She has concerns for me you could not feel.

Besides, this is not just a ghola, this is a child."

"We must be certain of her!"

Odrade saw the name form on Bellonda's lips but it remained unspoken.

"Jessica."

Another flawed Reverend Mother? Bell was right, they must be sure of Sheeana.

My responsibility. A vision of Sheeana's black sculpture flickered in Odrade's

awareness.

"Idaho's plan has some attraction, but . . ." Bellonda hesitated.

Odrade spoke up: "This is a very young child, growth incomplete. Pain of the

usual memory restoration could approach the Agony. It might alienate him. But

this . . ."

"Control him with an Imprinter, that part I approve. But what if it doesn't

restore his memories?"

"We still have the original plan. And it did have that effect on Idaho."

"Different for him but the decision can wait. You're late for your meeting with

Scytale."

Odrade hefted the crystal. "Daily summation?"

"Nothing you haven't seen too many times already." From Bell, that was almost a

note of concern.

"I'll bring him back here. Have Tam waiting and you come in later on some

pretext."

Scytale had become almost accustomed to these walks outside the ship and Odrade

observed this in his casual manner when they emerged from her transporter south

of Central.

It was more than a stroll and they both knew it but she had made these

excursions regular, designing repetition to lull him. Routine. So useful on

occasion.

"Kind of you to take me for these walks," Scytale said, looking up sideways.

"The air is drier than I recall it. Where do we go this evening?"

How tiny his eyes when he squinted against the sun.

"To my workroom." She nodded at outbuildings of Central about half a klick

north. It was cold under a cloudless spring sky and warm colors of roofs,

lights coming on in her tower, beckoned with promise of relief from a chilling

wind that accompanied almost every sunset these days.

With peripheral attention, Odrade watched the Tleilaxu beside her carefully.

Such tension! She could feel this also in guardian Reverend Mothers and

acolytes close behind them, all charged to special watchfulness by Bellonda.

We need this little monster and he knows it. And we still don't know the extent

of Tleilaxu abilities! What talents has he accumulated? Why does he probe with

such evident casualness for contact with his fellow prisoners?

Tleilaxu made the Idaho-ghola, she reminded herself. Did they hide secret

things in him?

"I am a beggar come to your door, Mother Superior," he said in that whining

elfin voice. "Our planets in ruins, my people slain. Why do we go to your

quarters?"

"To bargain in more pleasant surroundings."

"Yes, it is very confining in the ship. But I do not understand why we always

leave the car so far away from Central. Why do we walk?"

"I find it refreshing."

Scytale glanced around him at the plantings. "Pleasant, but quite cold, don't

you think?"

Odrade glanced to the south. These southern slopes were planted to grapes,

crests and colder northern faces reserved for orchards. Improved vinifera,

these vineyards. Developed by Bene Gesserit gardeners. Old vines, roots "gone

down to hell" where (according to ancient superstition) they stole water from

burning souls. The winery was underground as were storage and aging caves.

Nothing to mar a landscape of tended vines in orderly rows, plantings just far

enough apart for pickers and tilling equipment.

Pleasant to him? She doubted Scytale saw anything pleasing here. He was

properly nervous as she wanted him to be, asking himself: Why does she really

choose to walk me through these rustic surroundings?

It galled Odrade that they dared not employ more powerful Bene Gesserit

persuasives on this little man. But she agreed with advice that said if those

efforts failed, they would not get a second chance. Tleilaxu had demonstrated

they would die rather than give up secret (and sacred) knowledge.

"Several things puzzle me," Odrade said, picking her way around a pile of vine

trimmings as she spoke. "Why do you insist on having your own Face Dancers

before acceding to our requests? And what is this interest in Duncan Idaho?"

"Dear lady, I have no companions in my loneliness. That answers both

questions." He rubbed absently at his breast where the nullentropy capsule lay

concealed.

Why does he rub himself there so frequently? It was a gesture she and analysts

had puzzled over. No scar, no skin inflammation. Perhaps merely a carryover

from childhood. But that was so long ago! A flaw in this reincarnation? No

one could say. And that gray skin carried a metallic pigmentation that resisted

probing instruments. He was sure to have been sensitized to heavier rays and

would know those were used. No . . . now, it was all diplomacy. Damn this

little monster!

Scytale wondered: Did this powindah female have no natural sympathies on which

he could play? Typicals were ambivalent on that question.

"The Wekht of Jandola is no more," he said. "Billions of us slain by those

whores. To the farthest reaches of the Yaghist, we are destroyed and only I

remain."

Yaghist, she thought. Land of the unruled. It was a revealing word in

Islamiyat, the Bene Tleilax language.

In that language, she said: "The magic of our God is our only bridge."

Once more she claimed to share his Great Belief, the Sufi-Zensunni ecumenism

that had spawned the Bene Tleilax. She spoke the language flawlessly, knew the

proper words, but he saw falsehoods. She calls God's Messenger "Tyrant" and

disobeys the most basic precepts!

Where did these women meet in kehl to feel the presence of God? If they truly

spoke the Language of God, they would already know what they sought from him

with crude bargaining.

As they climbed the last slope to the paved landing at Central, Scytale called

on God for help. The Bene Tleilax come to this! Why have You put this trial

upon us? We are the last legalists of the Shariat and I, the last Master of my

people, must seek answers from You, God, when You no longer can speak to me in

kehl.

Once more in flawless Islamiyat, Odrade said: "You were betrayed by your own

people, ones you sent into the Scattering. You have no more Malik brothers,

only sisters."

Then where is your sagra chamber, powindah deceiver? Where is a deep and

windowless place only brothers may enter?

"This is a new thing for me," he said. "Malik Sisters? Those two words have

always been self-negating. Sisters cannot be Malik."

"Waff, your late Mahai and Abdl, had trouble with that. And he led your people

almost to extinction."

"Almost? You know of survivors?" He could not keep excitement from his voice.

"No Masters . . . but we hear of a few Domel and all in Honored Matre hands."

She paused where the edge of a building would cut off their view of the setting

sun in the next steps and, still in the secret language of the Tleilaxu, said:

"The sun is not God."

The dawn and sunset cry of the Mahai!

Scytale felt faith wavering as he followed her into an arched passage between

two squat buildings. Her words were proper but only the Mahai and Abdl should

utter them. In the shadowy passage, footsteps of their escort close behind,

Odrade confounded him by saying: "Why did you not say the proper words? Are

you not the last Master? Does that not make you Mahai and Abdl?"

"I was not chosen so by Malik brothers." It sounded weak even to him.

Odrade summoned a liftfield and paused at the tubeslot. In Other Memory detail,

she found kehl and its right of ghufran familiar -- words whispered in the night

by lovers of long-dead women. "And then we . . ." "And so if we speak these

sacred words . . ." Ghufran! Acceptance and readmission of one who had

ventured among powindah, the returned one begging pardon for contact with

unimaginable sins of aliens. The Masheikh have met in kehl and felt the

presence of their God!

The tubeslot opened. Odrade motioned Scytale and two guards ahead. As he

passed, she thought: Something must give soon. We cannot play our little game

to the end he desires.

Tamalane stood at the bow window, her back to the door, when Odrade and Scytale

entered the workroom. Sunset light slanted sharply across rooftops. The

brilliance vanished then and left behind it a sense of contrast, the night

darker because of that last glow along the horizon.

In the milky gloom, Odrade waved the guards away, noting their reluctance.

Bellonda had charged them to stay, obviously, but they would not disobey Mother

Superior. She indicated a chairdog across from her and waited for him to sit.

He looked back suspiciously at Tamalane before sinking into the 'dog but covered

it by saying: "Why are there no lights?"

"This is a relaxing interlude," she said. And I know darkness worries you!

She stood a moment behind her table, identifying bright patches in the gloom, a

luster of artifacts placed around her to make this her setting: the bust of

long-dead Chenoeh in its niche beside the window, and there on the wall at her

right, a pastoral landscape from the first human migrations into space, a stack

of ridulian crystals on the table and a silvery reflection off her lightscribe

concentrating faint illumination from the windows.

He has roasted long enough.

She touched a plate on her console. Glowglobes set strategically around walls

and ceiling came to life. Tamalane turned on cue, her robe swishing

deliberately. She stood two paces behind Scytale, the very picture of ominous

Bene Gesserit mystery.

Scytale twitched slightly at Tamalane's movement but now he sat quietly. The

chairdog was somewhat too large for him and he looked almost childlike there.

Odrade said, "Sisters who rescued you say you commanded a no-ship at Junction

preparing for the first foldspace leap when Honored Matres attacked. You were

coming to your ship in a one-man skitter, they said, and veered away just before

the explosions. You detected the attackers?"

"Yes." Reluctance in his voice.

"And knew they might locate the no-ship from your trajectory. So you fled,

leaving your brothers to be destroyed."

He spoke with the utter bitterness of a tragic witness: "Earlier, when we were

outbound from Tleilax, we saw that attack begin. Our explosions to destroy

everything of value to attackers and the burners from space created the

holocaust. We fled then, too."

"But not directly to Junction."

"Everywhere we searched, they had been before us. They had the ashes but I had

our secrets." Remind her that I still have something of value to trade! He

tapped a finger against his head.

"You sought Guild or CHOAM sanctuary at junction," she said. "How fortunate our

spy ship was there to scoop you up before the enemy could react."

"Sister . . ." How difficult that word! ". . . if you truly are my sister in

kehl, why will you not provide me with Face Dancer servants?"

"Still too many secrets between us, Scytale. Why, for instance, were you

leaving Bandalong when attackers came?"

Bandalong!

Naming the great Tleilax city constricted his chest and he thought he felt the

nullentropy capsule pulse, as though it sought release for its precious

contents. Lost Bandalong. Never again to see the city of carnelian skies,

never to feel the presence of brothers, of patient Domel and . . .

"Are you ill?" Odrade asked.

"I am sick with what I have lost!" He heard fabric slither behind him and

sensed Tamalane closer. How oppressive it was in this place! "Why is she

behind me?"

"I am the servant of my Sisters and she is here to observe us both."

"You've taken some of my cells, haven't you? You're growing a replacement

Scytale in your tanks!"

"Of course we are. You don't think Sisters would let the last Master end here,

do you?"

"No ghola of me will do anything I would not!" And it will carry no nullentropy

tube!

"We know." But what is it we do not know?

"This is not bargaining," he complained.

"You misjudge me, Scytale. We know when you lie and when you conceal. We

employ senses others do not."

It was true! They detected things from odors of his body, from small movements

of muscles, expressions he could not suppress.

Sisters? These creatures are powindah! All of them!

"You were on lashkar," Odrade prodded.

Lashkar! How he wished he were here on lashkar. Face Dance warriors, Domel

assistants -- eliminating this abominable evil! But he dared not lie. The one

behind him probably was a Truthsayer. Experience in many lives told him Bene

Gesserit Truthsayers were the best.

"I commanded a force of khasadars. We sought a herd of Futars for our defense."

Herd? Did Tleilaxu know something of Futars not revealed to the Sisterhood?

"You went prepared for violence. Did Honored Matres learn of your mission and

cut you off? I think it likely."

"Why do you call them Honored Matres?" His voice lapsed almost into a screech.

"Because that is what they call themselves." Very calm now. Let him stew in

his own mistakes.

She is right! We were betrayed. Bitter thought. He held it close, wondering

how he should reply. A small revelation? There is never a small revelation

with these women.

A sigh shook his breast. The nullentropy capsule and its contents. His most

important concern. Anything to get him access to his own axlotl tanks.

"Descendants of people we sent into the Scattering returned with captive Futars.

A mingling of human and cat, as you doubtless know. But they did not reproduce

in our tanks. And before we could determine why, the ones brought to us died."

The betrayers brought us only two! We should have suspected.

"They didn't bring you very many Futars, did they? You should have suspected

they were bait."

See? That is what they do with small revelations!

"Why did the Futars not hunt and kill Honored Matres on Gammu?" It was Duncan's

question and deserved an answer.

"We were told no orders were given. They do not kill without orders." She

knows this. She is testing me.

"Face Dancers also kill on order," she said. "They would even kill you if you

ordered it. Not so?"

"That order is reserved for keeping our secrets from the hands of enemies."

"Is that why you want your own Face Dancers? Do you consider us enemies?"

Before he could compose a response, Bellonda's projected figure appeared above

the table, lifesize and partly translucent, dancing crystals of Archives behind

her. "Urgent from Sheeana!" Bellonda said. "The spice blow has occurred.

Sandworms!" The figure turned and looked at Scytale, comeyes perfectly

coordinating her movements. "So you have lost a bargaining chip, Master

Scytale! We have our spice at last!" The projected figure vanished with an

audible click and a faint smell of ozone.

"You're trying to trick me!" he blurted.

But the door at Odrade's left opened. Sheeana entered towing a small suspensor

pod no more than two meters long. Its transparent sides repeated the glowglobes

of the workroom in tiny bursts of yellow light. Something squirmed in the pod!

Sheeana stood aside without speaking, giving them a full view of the contents.

So small! The worm was less than half the length of its container but perfect

in every detail, stretched out there on a shallow bed of golden sand.

Scytale could not contain a gasp of awe. The Prophet!

Odrade's reaction was pragmatic. She bent close to the pod, peering into the

miniature mouth. The scorching huff-huff of a great worm's internal fires

reduced to this? What a tiny mimicry!

Crystal teeth flashed as it lifted its front segments.

The worm sent its mouth questing left and right. They all saw behind the teeth

the miniature fire in its alien chemistry.

"Thousands of them," Sheeana said. "They came to a spice blow as they always

do."

Odrade remained silent. We have done it! But this was Sheeana's moment of

triumph. Let her make the most of it. Scytale had never looked this defeated.

Sheeana opened the pod and lifted the worm from it, cradling it as though it

were an infant. It lay quiescent in her arms.

Odrade took a deep, satisfied breath. She still controls them.

"Scytale," Odrade said.

He could not take his gaze from the worm.

"Do you still serve the Prophet?" Odrade asked. "There he is!"

He did not know how to respond. Truly a revenant of the Prophet? He wanted to

deny his first awed response but his eyes would not permit it.

Odrade spoke softly. "While you were out on your foolish mission, your selfish

mission, we were serving the Prophet! We rescued his last revenant and brought

him here. Chapterhouse will become another Dune!"

She sat back and steepled her hands in front of her. Bell was watching through

the comeyes, of course. A Mentat's observations would be valuable. Odrade

wished Idaho were also watching. But he could look at a holo. It was clear to

her that Scytale had seen the Bene Gesserit only as tools for restoration of his

precious Tleilaxu civilization. Would this development force him to reveal

inner secrets of his tanks? What would he offer?

"I must have time to think." A tremor in his voice.

"About what would you think?"

He did not answer but kept his attention on Sheeana, who was replacing the tiny

worm in its pod. She stroked it once before sealing the lid.

"Tell me, Scytale," Odrade insisted. "How can there be anything for you to

reconsider? This is our Prophet! You say you serve the Great Belief. Then

serve it!"

She could see his dreams dissolving. His own Face Dancers to print memories of

those they killed, copying each victim's shape and manner. He had never hoped

to gull a Reverend Mother . . . but acolytes and simple workers of Chapterhouse

. . . all the secrets he had hoped to acquire, gone! Lost as certainly as the

charred husks of Tleilaxu planets.

Our Prophet, she said. He turned a stricken look toward Odrade but did not

focus. What am I to do? These women no longer need me. But I need them!

"Scytale." How softly she spoke. "The Great Convention is ended. It's a new

universe out there."

He tried to swallow in a dry throat. The whole concept of violence had taken on

a new dimension. In the Old Empire, the Convention had guaranteed retaliation

against anyone who dared burn a planet by attacking from space.

"Escalated violence, Scytale." Odrade's voice was almost a whisper. "We

Scatter pods of rage."

He focused on her. What is she saying?

"The hatred being stored up against Honored Matres," she said.

You are not the only one with losses, Scytale. Once, when problems arose in our

civilization, the cry went out: "Bring a Reverend Mother!" Honored Matres

prevent that. And the myths are recomposed. Golden light is cast upon our

past. "It was better in the old days when the Bene Gesserit could help us.

Where do you go for reliable Truthsayers these days? Arbitration? These

Honored Matres have never heard the word! They were always courteous, the

Reverend Mothers. You have to say that for them."

When Scytale did not respond, she said: "Think of what might happen if that

rage were loosed in a jihad!"

When he still did not speak, she said: "You have seen it. Tleilaxu, Bene

Gesserit, priests of the Divided God, and who knows how many more -- all hunted

like wild game."

"They cannot kill us all!" An agonized cry.

"Can't they? Your Scattered ones made common cause with Honored Matres. Is

that a sanctuary you would seek in the Scattering?"

And there goes another dream: Little pods of Tleilaxu, persistent as festering

sores, awaiting the day of Scytale's Great Revival.

"People grow strong under oppression," he said, but there was no force in his

words. "Even the Priests of Rakis are finding holes in which to hide!"

Desperate words.

"Who says this? Some of your returned friends?"

His silence was all the answer she needed.

"Bene Tleilax have killed Honored Matres and they know it," she said, hammering

at him. "They will be satisfied only with your extermination."

"And yours!"

"We are partners by necessity if not by shared belief." She said it in purest

Islamiyat and saw hope leap into his eyes. Kehl and Shariat may yet take on

their old meanings among people who compose their thoughts in the Language of

God.

"Partners?" Faint and extremely tentative.

She adopted new bluntness. "In some ways, that's a more reliable basis for

common action than any other. Each of us knows what the other wants. An

intrinsic design: Screen everything through that and something reliable can

occur."

"And what is it you want from me?"

"You already know."

"How to make the finest tanks, yes." He shook his head, obviously unsure. The

changes implied by her demands!

Odrade wondered if she dared snap at him in open anger. How dense he was! But