A message would be dispatched to the Mother School immediately. Crafty old Harishka would have ample opportunity to plan an appropriate response.
Thinking, and the methods by which thoughts are communicated, inevitably create a system permeated by illusions.
— Zensunni Teaching
As the arrogant-looking witch Cristane guided Baron Harkonnen through the maze of shadowy passageways, his walking stick clicked like gunshots on the cold flagstone floor. With his six guards behind him, he hobbled forward, trying to keep up.
“Your Mother Superior has no choice but to listen,” the Baron said in a strident voice. “If I don’t get the cure I need, the Emperor will learn of the Sisterhood’s crimes!” Cristane ignored him; she tossed her short, chestnut hair and never looked back.
It was a damp night on Wallach IX, the outside silence broken only by cold breezes. Yellow globes illuminated the corridors of the complex of school buildings. No Sisters stirred, and only shadows moved. The Baron felt as if he were walking into a tomb— which it would be if he ever brought his case before the Landsraad. Breaking the Great Convention was the most serious offense the witches could commit. He held all the cards.
Haloed by pulsing light from poorly tuned glowglobes, Cristane marched ahead until she seemed to fade from view. The young witch glanced back, but did not wait for him. When one of the guards tried to assist the Baron, he responded by shoving the arm away and continuing on his own, as best he could manage. A shiver ran up his spine, as if someone had whispered a curse in his ear.
The Bene Gesserit had hidden fighting skills, and there must be swarms of them in this lair. What if the Mother Superior didn’t care about his accusations? What if the old hag thought he was bluffing? Even his armed Harkonnen troopers could do nothing to keep the witches from killing him in their own nest, should they choose to attack.
But the Baron knew they dared not act against him.
Where are all the witches hiding? Then he grinned. They must be afraid of me.
With an angry huff, the Baron reviewed the demands he would make, three simple concessions and he would not file formal charges in the Landsraad: a cure for his disease, delivering Gaius Helen Mohiam to him intact and ready for utter humiliation . . . and the return of the two daughters he’d been coerced into fathering. The Baron was curious about how his offspring fit into the witches’ plans, but he supposed he could back off on that demand, if necessary. He didn’t really want a couple of female brats anyway, but it gave him negotiating room.
Sister Cristane moved ahead, while the guards hung back to match the Baron’s painful, plodding pace. She turned a corner into shadows ahead of him. The pulsing glowglobes seemed too yellow, too filled with static. They began to give him a headache, and he wasn’t seeing clearly.
When the Baron’s entourage turned the corner, they saw only an empty hall. Cristane was gone.
The cool stone walls echoed with the disconcerted gasps of the Harkonnen escort. A weak breeze, like cadaverous breath, oozed across the air and stole under the Baron’s clothing. Involuntarily, he shivered. He heard a faint whisper, like scuttling rodent feet, but saw no movement.
“Run ahead and check it out!” He nudged the squad leader in the side. “Where did she go?”
One of the troopers unshouldered his lasrifle and ran along the glowglobe-illuminated corridor. Moments later he shouted back, “Nothing here, my Lord Baron.” His voice had an eerie, hollow quality, as if this place sucked sound and light from the air. “No one in sight anywhere.”
The Baron waited, his senses alert. Cold sweat trickled down his back, and he narrowed his spider-black eyes, more in consternation than in terror. “Check all passageways and rooms in the vicinity, and report back to me.” The Baron looked down the corridor, refusing to step deeper into the trap. “And don’t be so edgy that you shoot each other.”
His men disappeared from view, and he no longer heard their shouts or footsteps, either. This place felt like a mausoleum. And damned cold. He hobbled into an alcove and stood silently with his back to a wall, ready to protect himself. He unholstered a personal flèchette pistol, checked its charge of poisoned needles . . . and held his breath.
A glowglobe flickered over his head, dimmed. Hypnotic.
With a sound of running boots, one of his men reappeared, short of breath. “Please come with me, my Lord Baron. You need to see this.”
Unsettled, the man led the way down a short set of stairs and past a library where filmbooks were still playing, their whispering voices droning into empty air, with no listeners. Cushion indentations remained on some of the chairs, where patrons had sat only moments ago. Everyone had disappeared without bothering to shut off the programs. The muffled speakers sounded like the voices of fading ghosts.
The Baron’s distress grew as he hobbled from room to room with the troopers, then finally from building to building. They found no one, not even when his men used primitive life-tracer scanners. Where were the witches? In catacombs? Where had his escort Cristane gone?
Anger made the Baron’s cheeks hot. How could he present his demands to the witch mother if he couldn’t find her? Was Harishka trying to buy time? By avoiding the confrontation, she had short-circuited his revenge. Did she think he would just go away?
He hated to feel helpless. Swinging his walking stick, the Baron smashed the nearest library reader, then flailed about, breaking everything he could find. With glee, the guards set about overturning tables, knocking down shelves, tossing heavy volumes through glass windows.
It accomplished nothing. “Enough,” he said, then led the way down the corridor again.
Presently he stood in a large office; gold lettering on the door marked it as the workroom of the Mother Superior. The dark, highly polished desk was clear of objects, no files or records anywhere; its chair sat at an angle, as if pushed back abruptly. On a ceramic dish, incense still burned, imparting a faint odor of cloves. He knocked it onto the floor in a flurry of aromatic ash.
Damned witches. The Baron shivered. He and his men backed out of the room.
Outside again, he became disoriented, a disconcertingly alien feeling of being lost. Neither he nor his guards could agree upon the correct route back to the shuttle. The Baron strode across an outdoor park and into a passageway that skirted a large stucco-and-timber building where lights burned inside.
In the grand dining hall, hundreds of still-steaming meals rested on long plank tables, benches arranged neatly in place. No other people were in the room. No one.
With his finger, one of the troopers nudged a chunk of meat in a bowl of stew. “Don’t touch that,” the Baron barked. “Could be subdermal poison.” It would be just the sort of thing the witches would try. The trooper recoiled.
The squad leader’s pale-eyed gaze darted around; his uniform was damp with perspiration. “They must have been here only minutes ago. You can still smell the food.”
The Baron cursed and swung his wormhead cane across the table, knocking plates, cups, and food to the floor. The clatter echoed off the walls and ceiling of the hall. But there was no other sound.
His men used detection equipment to check under the floors, in the walls and ceilings, sweeping in all directions without success.
“Check the calibration on those life-tracers. The witches are here somewhere, damn them!”
As he watched his men work feverishly, the Baron fumed. His skin crawled. He thought he heard a faint, smothered laugh, but it vanished into the haunted silence.
“Do you want us to torch this place, my Baron?” the squad leader asked, eager for the conflagration.
He imagined the entire Mother School in flames, the convoluted wisdom and history and breeding records consumed in an inferno. Perhaps the black-clad witches would be trapped inside their hidden bolt-holes and roasted alive. That would be worth seeing.
But he shook his head, angry at the answer forced upon him. Until the witches gave him the cure he desperately needed, Baron
Harkonnen dared not strike against the Bene Gesserit.
Afterward, however . . . he would make up for lost time.
There is no reality— only our own order imposed on everything.
— Basic Bene Gesserit Dictum
For Jessica it was like a child’s game . . . except this one was deadly serious.
Rustling like bats, hundreds of Sisters filled the dining hall, amused to watch the Baron’s antics, dodging him as if it were a game of invisible tag. Some crouched under tables; Jessica and Mohiam pressed against the wall. All the women were in silent breathing mode, concentrating on the illusion. No one spoke.
They were in plain sight, but the befuddled Harkonnens could neither see nor sense them. The Baron saw only what the Bene Gesserit wanted him to see.
On top of the head table stood the dark, aged Mother Superior, smiling like a schoolgirl in the middle of a prank. Harishka folded rail-thin arms across her chest as the pursuers grew more and more frustrated and noticeably agitated.
A trooper passed only centimeters in front of Jessica. He waved a life-tracer, nearly striking her face. But the guard saw nothing but false readings. On the dial of the scanner, data blinked and flared as the soldier moved past Jessica— though to him nothing registered on the gauge. Devices could not easily be fooled . . . but men were different.
Life is an illusion, to be tailored to our needs, she thought, quoting a lesson she had learned from her teacher Mohiam. Every Acolyte knew how to trick the eye, the most vulnerable of human senses. The Sisters made barely audible sounds, dampened their slight movements.
Knowing the swaggering Baron was on his way, Mother Superior had summoned the Sisters into the great dining hall. “Baron Harkonnen believes he is in control,” she had said in her crackling voice. “He thinks to intimidate us, but we must remove his strength, make him feel impotent.”
“We are also buying time for ourselves to consider this matter . . . and giving the Baron time to make his own mistakes. Harkonnens are not known for their patience.”
Across the room, the clumsy Baron nearly brushed against Sister Cristane, who slid smoothly away.
“What the hells was that?” He whirled, sensing the movement of air, a brief scent of fabric. “I heard something rustle, like a robe.” The guards raised their weapons, but saw no targets. The heavyset man shuddered.
Jessica exchanged a smile with her teacher. The Reverend Mother’s normally flat eyes danced with glee. From her high table, Mother Superior stared down at the flustered men like a bird of prey.
In preparation for the mass hypnosis that now smothered the Baron and his men, Sister Cristane had allowed herself to be visible to them, so she could lead them into the web. But gradually the guide had faded from view as the Sisters concentrated, focusing their efforts on these pliable victims.
The Baron hobbled closer, his face a mask of unbridled fury. Jessica had the opportunity to trip him, but chose not to.
Mohiam moved to glide beside him, said something faint and eerie. “You shall fear, Baron.” In a directed-whisper that carried only to the fat man’s ears, this man she despised so much, Mohiam created a barely discernible susurration that twisted words from the Litany Against Fear into something altogether different:
“You shall fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” She walked around him, spoke to the back of his head. “You cannot face your fear. It will pass inside you and infect you.”
He thrashed with his hand, as if to bat away a bothersome insect. His expression looked troubled. “When we look upon the path of your fear, there will be nothing left of you.” Smoothly, Mohiam slipped away from him. “Only the Sisterhood will remain.”
The Baron stopped dead in his tracks, his face pale, his jowls twitching. His black eyes glanced to the left, where Mohiam had been standing only seconds before. He swung his cane in that direction, so hard that he lost his balance and fell to the floor.
“Get me out of here!” he bellowed to his guards.
Two troopers rushed to help him to his feet. The squad leader guided them to the main doors and out into the passageway, while the remaining guards continued to search for targets, swinging the snub noses of their lasrifles back and forth.
At the threshold, the Baron hesitated. “Damned witches.” He looked around. “Which way back?”
“To the right, my Lord Baron,” the squad leader said in a firm voice. Unknown to him, Cristane hovered invisibly at his side, whispering directions in his ear. Upon reaching the shuttle, they would find it already set on automatic pilot, ready to take the Baron back through the planet’s complex defenses to their frigate in orbit.
Unsuccessful, frustrated, helpless. The Baron was not accustomed to such feelings. “They wouldn’t dare harm me,” he muttered.
Nearby, several Sisters snickered.
As the Harkonnens fled like gaze hounds with their tails between their legs, ghostly laughter from the dining hall followed them.
Immobility is often mistaken for peace.
— EMPEROR ELROOD CORRINO IX
With good humor, Rhombur’s new concubine Tessia accompanied him around the grounds of Castle Caladan. It amused her that the exiled Prince seemed more like an excited, clumsy child than the heir to a renegade House. It was a sunny morning, with lacy clouds drifting high overhead.
“It is hard to get to know you, when you fawn upon me so, my Prince.” They walked together along a terraced hillside path.
He clearly felt out of his league. “Uh, first you’ve got to call me Rhombur.”
She raised her eyebrows, and her sepia eyes sparkled. “I suppose that is a start.”
He flushed deeply as they continued to walk. “You must have smitten me, Tessia.” He plucked a field daisy from a spray of flowers on a grassy embankment and extended it to her. “Since I’m the son of a great Earl, I suppose I shouldn’t allow that, should I?”
Tessia accepted the offering and spun the flower coyly in front of her plain but intelligent-looking face. She peeked around the petals at him; her expression grew warm and understanding. “There are some advantages to living in exile, I suppose. Nobody notices who you’re smitten with.”
Then she pointed a stern finger at him. “Though I would respect you more if you did something to counteract the dishonor that’s fallen on your family. Simply being an optimist hasn’t achieved anything for years, has it? Trusting that everything will turn out right, thinking that you can do nothing more than sit here and complain? Talking is no substitute for doing.”
Surprised by the remark, Rhombur spluttered his response. “But I’ve, uh, requested that Ambassador Pilru file petition after petition. Won’t my oppressed people try to overthrow the invaders, waiting for me to return? I expect to march back and reclaim my family name . . . anytime now.”
“If you sit safely here and wait for your people to do your work for you, then you do not deserve to rule such a populace. Have you learned nothing from Leto Atreides?” Tessia put her hands on her slender hips. “If you ever intend to be an Earl, Rhombur, you must follow your passions. And get better intelligence reports.”
He felt decidedly uncomfortable, stung by the truth in her words, but at a loss. “How, Tessia? I have no army. Emperor Shaddam refuses to intervene . . . and the Landsraad, too. I was only granted limited amnesty when my family went renegade. Uh, what else can I do?”
Determined, she grasped his elbow as they continued their brisk walk. “If you permit me, perhaps I might make suggestions. They teach us many subjects on Wallach IX, including politics, psychology, strategy facilitation. . . . Never forget that I am a Bene Gesserit, not a serving wench. I am intelligent and well educated, and I see many things that you do not.”
Rhombur stumbled along with her, trying to regain his mental balance. Suspicious, he said, “Is this something the Sisterhood put you up to? Were you assigned as my concubine just to help me get Ix back?”
“No, my Prince. I won’t
pretend, though, that the Bene Gesserit wouldn’t prefer to have a stable House Vernius back in power. Dealing with the Bene Tleilax is far more difficult . . . and confusing.” Tessia ran her fingers through her close-cropped brown hair, making it look as mussed as the Prince’s perpetual tangles. “For myself, I would rather be the concubine of a Great Earl within the fabled Grand Palais on Ix, than of an exiled Prince who lives off the good graces of a generous Duke.”
He swallowed hard, then plucked another field daisy and sniffed it himself. “I would rather be that person, too, Tessia.”
• • •
Looking down from a Castle balcony, Leto watched Rhombur and Tessia stroll hand in hand across a field of wildflowers swaying in the ocean breeze. Leto felt a heavy ache in his heart, a warm envy toward his friend; the Ixian Prince seemed to be walking on air, as if he had forgotten all about the troubles on his overthrown homeworld.
He smelled Kailea’s perfume behind him, a sweet, flowery scent reminiscent of hyacinth and lily of the valley, but he hadn’t heard her approach. He looked back at her, and wondered how long she had been standing there, watching him stare down at the inseparable lovers.
“She’s good for him,” Kailea said. “I never had much fondness for the Bene Gesserit before this, but Tessia is an exception.”
Leto chuckled. “He does seem quite taken with her. A testament to Sisterhood seduction training.”
Kailea cocked her head; she wore a jewel-studded comb in her hair, and had taken particular care to apply the most flattering touch of makeup. He had always found her beautiful, but at this moment she seemed . . . aglow.
“It takes more than dueling practice, parades, and fishing trips to make my brother happy . . . or any man.” Kailea stepped out onto the sunlit balcony with Leto, and he became uncomfortably aware of how alone they were.
Back before the fall of Ix, when she had been the daughter of a powerful Great House, Kailea Vernius had seemed a perfect match for Leto. Given time, in the normal course of events, Old Duke Paulus and Earl Dominic Vernius probably would have arranged a marriage.
Dune: House Harkonnen Page 19
