When the priest caught up, Mapes unfastened a doorseal and swung a camouflaged door inward. Now, unmuffled by seals and doors, voices could be heard, mixed with the hum of machinery and the rustle of many people. Glowglobes tuned to dim yellow bobbed in the air currents.
Mapes passed through a fabric-covered doorway into a room where women worked power looms, weaving long strands of hair and desert cotton into fabrics. The warm air held a heavy human musk and waftings of melange-incense. All eyes watched the regal, blonde visitor.
The weaving room opened into another chamber, where a man tended a metal pot suspended over a cooking fire. Firelight danced on the Shadout’s wrinkled face and imparted a feral look to her deep blue eyes. Margot observed everything, storing details for her later report. She had never imagined the Fremen could hide such a population, such a settlement.
Finally, they emerged into a larger, dirt-floored chamber filled with desert plants, sectioned off by paths. She recognized saguaro, wild alfalfa, creosote, and poverty grasses. An entire botanical testing ground!
“Wait here, Lady Fenring.” Mapes strode ahead, accompanied by the priest. Alone, Margot bent to examine the cacti, saw glossy ears, firm flesh, pale new growth. Somewhere in another cavern she heard voices and resonating chants.
At a slight sound she looked up to see an ancient woman in a black robe. Standing by herself on one of the garden pathways, arms folded over her chest, the strange woman was withered and wiry, as tough as shigawire. She wore a necklace of sparkling metal rings, and her dark eyes looked like shadowed pits gouged into her face.
Something about her demeanor, her presence, reminded Margot of a Bene Gesserit. On Wallach IX, Mother Superior Harishka was approaching the two-century mark, but this woman looked even older, her body saturated with spice, her skin aged by climate more than years. Even her voice was dry. “I am Sayyadina Ramallo. We are about to begin the Ceremony of the Seed. Join us, if you are truly who you say you are.”
Ramallo! I know that name. Margot stepped forward, ready to cite the secret code phrases to identify her awareness of the Missionaria Protectiva work. A woman named Ramallo had disappeared into the dunes a full century ago . . . the last of a series of Reverend Mothers to vanish.
“No time for that now, child,” the old woman interrupted her. “Everyone is waiting. With you among us, they are as curious as I am.”
Margot followed the Sayyadina into a vast cavern that thronged with thousands upon thousands of people. She had never imagined such a huge enclosure within the high rocks— how had they eluded detection from the constant Harkonnen patrols? This wasn’t just a squalid settlement, but an entire hidden city. The Fremen had far more secrets, and far greater plans, than even Hasimir Fenring suspected.
A wall of unpleasant scents assailed her. Crowded close, some of the Fremen wore dusty cloaks; others were in stillsuits, open at the collars within the body-humid cave. Off to one side stood the priest who had brought her from Arrakeen.
I’m certain they left no sign of our departure from the conservatory. If they mean to kill me now, no one will ever know what happened— just like the other Sisters. Then Margot smiled to herself. No, if I am harmed, Hasimir will find them. The Fremen might think their secrets were safe, but even they could be no match for her Count, should he focus his efforts and intellect on tracking them down.
The Fremen might doubt that, but Margot did not.
As the last of the desert people streamed into the cavern from several entrances, Ramallo took Margot’s hand in her sinewy grip. “Come with me.” The withered Sayyadina led the way up stone steps to a rock platform, where she faced the crowd.
The cavern fell silent except for a rustle of clothes, like bat wings.
With some trepidation, Margot took a position beside the old woman. I feel like a sacrifice. She used breathing exercises to calm herself. Wave upon wave of impenetrable Fremen eyes stared at her.
“Shai-Hulud watches over us,” Ramallo said. “Let the watermasters come forward.”
Four men made their way through the crowd. Each pair carried a small skin sack between them. They placed the sloshing containers at the feet of the Sayyadina.
“Is there seed?” Ramallo asked.
“There is seed,” the men announced, in unison. They turned and departed.
Opening the top of one of the sacks, Ramallo splashed liquid onto both hands. “Blessed is the water and its seed.” She brought her hands out, trickling blue fluid as if the droplets were liquid sapphires.
The words and the ceremony startled Margot, for they resembled the Bene Gesserit poison ordeal through which a Sister was transformed into a Reverend Mother. A few chemicals— all deadly poisons— could be used to induce the terrible agony and mental crisis upon a Sister. Adapted from the Missionaria Protectiva? Had the vanished Bene Gesserit brought even this secret to the Fremen? If so, what else did the desert people know about the Sisterhood’s plans?
Ramallo unfastened the sack’s coiled spout and pointed its end toward Margot. Showing no glimmer of doubt, Margot dropped to her knees and took the tube in her hands, then hesitated.
“If you are truly a Reverend Mother,” Ramallo whispered, “you will drink this exhalation of Shai-Hulud without harm to yourself.”
“I am a Reverend Mother,” Margot said. “I have done this before.”
The Fremen maintained their deep, reverent silence.
“You have never done this before, child,” the old woman said. “Shai-Hulud will judge you.”
The sack reeked of familar spice odor, but with an underlying bitterness. The acrid blue liquid seemed to roil with death. Though she had passed the Agony to become a Reverend Mother, Margot had nearly died in the process.
But she could do it again.
Beside her, the Sayyadina uncoiled the drinking tube on the second sack. She took a sip from the tube, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
I must not fear, Margot thought. Fear is the mind-killer . . . In her mind she recited the entire Litany Against Fear, then sucked on the straw, drawing in just a drop. The barest bit of moisture, touching the tip of her tongue.
It struck her with a shockingly vile taste, like a hammer, all the way to the back of her skull. Poison! Her body recoiled, but she forced herself to concentrate on her own chemistry, altered a molecule here, added or subtracted a radical there. It required all of her skills.
Margot released the tube. Her consciousness floated, and time stopped its eternal, cosmic progression. She let her body, her trained Bene Gesserit abilities take over and begin to alter the chemistry of the deadly poison. Margot understood what she had to do, breaking the chemical down into something useful, creating a catalyst that would transform the rest of the liquid in the sacks. . . .
The taste changed to sweetness in her mouth.
Every action she had taken up to that point in her life lay spread like a tapestry for her to observe. Sister Margot Rashino-Zea, now Lady Margot Fenring, examined herself in minute detail, every cell of her body, every nerve fiber . . . every thought she’d ever experienced. Deep in her core, Margot found that terrible dark place she could never see, the place that fascinated and terrified all of her kind. Only the long-anticipated Kwisatz Haderach could look there. The Lisan al-Gaib.
I will survive this, she told herself.
Margot’s head reverberated as if a gong had been struck inside it. She saw a distorted image of Sayyadina Ramallo wavering in front of her. Then one of the watermasters came forward and pressed the tip of the tube into Margot’s mouth, collecting the drop of transformed liquid, which he then dipped into the contents of the sack. Beside her, the ancient woman released her grip on the second tube, and other watermasters spread the transformed poison from one container to another like firestarters touching flaming brands to a field of dry grass.
People thronged to the sacks to receive droplets of the catalyzed drug, brushing the moistness against their lips. Ramallo said, somewhere in Margot’s consciousne
ss, “You have helped make it possible for them.”
Strange. This was so different from anything in her experience . . . but not so different after all.
Slowly, like a dreamer dancing inside her own consciousness, Margot felt herself return to the stone-walled chamber, with the drug-induced vision only a flickering memory. Fremen continued to touch their fingers to the hanging droplets, tasting, moving to the side so that others could partake. Euphoria spread like dawnlight in the cavern.
“Yes, once I was a Reverend Mother,” Ramallo told her, at long last. “Many years ago I knew your Mother Superior.”
Still fogged by reverberations of the powerful drug, Margot couldn’t even act shocked, and the old woman nodded. “Sister Harishka and I were classmates . . . long, long ago. I joined the Missionaria Protectiva and was sent here with nine other Reverend Mothers. Many of our order had been lost before, absorbed into the Fremen tribes. Others simply died in the desert. I am the last. It is a harsh life on Dune, even for a trained Bene Gesserit. Even with melange, which we have come to understand, and appreciate, in new ways.”
Margot looked deeply into Ramallo’s eyes and saw understanding there.
“Your message spoke of the Lisan al-Gaib,” Ramallo said, her voice quavering. “He is close, is he not? After these thousands of years.”
Margot kept her voice low as the Fremen became wilder with the ecstasy of their ritual. “We hope within two generations.”
“These people have waited a long time.” The Sayyadina surveyed the euphoria in the room. “I can reveal Bene Gesserit matters to you, child, but I have a dual allegiance. I am also a Fremen now, sworn to uphold the values of the desert tribes. Certain confidences cannot be revealed to any outworlder. One day I must choose a successor— one of the women here, no doubt.”
Ramallo bowed her head. “The sietch tau orgy is a merging point of Bene Gesserit and Fremen. Long before the Missionaria Protectiva arrived here, these people had discovered how to partake of the awareness-spectrum narcotic in primitive, simple ways.”
In the shadows of the great chamber the Fremen moved apart, and together, fogged with the drug, some raised to an inner peace and ecstasy, some driven to members of the opposite sex in frenzied coupling. A sloppily painted canvas of reality settled over them, turning their harsh lives into a dream image.
“Over the centuries, Sisters like myself guided them to follow new ceremonies, and we adapted the old Fremen ways to our own.”
“You’ve accomplished a great deal here, Mother. Wallach IX will be eager to learn of it.”
While the Fremen orgy continued, Margot felt as if she were floating, numb and separate from it all. The ancient woman raised a clawlike hand in benediction, to release her back into the outside world. “Go and report to Harishka.” Ramallo displayed a wispy smile. “And give her this gift.” She removed a small boundbook from a pocket of her robe.
Opening the volume, Margot read the title page: Manual of the Friendly Desert. Beneath that, in smaller letters, it read, “The place full of life. Here are the ayat and burhan of Life. Believe, and al-Lat shall never burn you.”
“This is like the Azhar Book,” Margot exclaimed, surprised to see an edition adapted to Fremen ways. “Our Book of Great Secrets.”
“Give my sacred copy to Harishka. It will please her.”
• • •
Awed now by her presence, the Rutii priest took Margot back to the Residency at Arrakeen. She arrived shortly before dawn, just as the sky began to pale into soft orange pastels, and slipped into her bed. No one in the household— other than the Shadout Mapes— knew she had ever gone. Excited, she lay awake for hours. . . .
Several days later, her head full of questions, Margot climbed the trail back to the cave, following her crystal-clear memory map. In bright sunlight she traversed the steep trail into Rimwall West, made her way across the narrow ledge to the opening of the sietch. The heat slowed her.
Slipping inside the cool cave shadows, she found that the doorseal had been removed. She walked through the chambers, finding them empty. No machinery, no furnishings, no people. No proof. Only odors lingered. . . .
“So, you don’t entirely trust me after all, Sayyadina,” she said aloud.
For a long while Margot remained in the cavern where the tau orgy had taken place. She knelt where she had consumed the Water of Life, feeling the echoes of long habitation there. All gone now. . . .
The next day Count Hasimir Fenring returned from his desert inspections with the Baron Harkonnen. At dinner, basking in her presence, he asked his lovely wife what she had done in his absence.
“Oh nothing, my love,” she responded with a carefree toss of her honey-gold hair. She brushed her lips across his cheek in a tender kiss. “I just tended my garden.”
I stand in the sacred human presence. As I do now, so should you stand some day. I pray to your presence that this be so. Let the future remain uncertain for that is the canvas to receive our desires. Thus the human condition faces its perpetual tabula rasa. We possess no more than this moment where we dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create.
— Bene Gesserit Benediction
This is how we test humans, girl.”
Behind the barrier of her desk, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam looked like a stranger, her face stony, her eyes black and merciless. “It is a death-alternative challenge.”
Instantly tense, Jessica stood before the Proctor Superior. A skinny girl with long, bronze hair, her face bore the seeds of genuine beauty that would soon flower. In back of her, the Acolyte who had delivered the Reverend Mother’s summons closed the heavy door. It locked with an ominous click.
What kind of test does she have in mind for me?
“Yes, Reverend Mother?” Summoning all of her strength, Jessica kept her voice calm and still, envisioning a shallow pool of sound.
With a recent promotion, Mohiam had acquired her additional title as Proctor Superior of the Mother School on Wallach IX. Mohiam had her own private office, with antique books sealed in a clearplaz humidity case. On her wide desk sat three silver trays, each containing a geometric object: a green metal cube, a brilliant red pyramid, a golden sphere. Streaks of light shot from the surfaces of the objects, bouncing between them. For a long moment, Jessica stared at the hypnotic dance.
“You must listen to me carefully, girl, to every word, every inflection, every nuance. Your very life depends on this.”
Jessica lowered her eyebrows. Her green-eyed gaze shifted to the older woman’s tiny, birdlike eyes. Mohiam seemed nervous and fearful, but why?
“What are those?” Jessica pointed at the unusual articles on the desk.
“You’re curious, are you?”
Jessica nodded.
“They are whatever you think they are.” Mohiam’s voice was as dry as a desert wind.
Synchronized, the objects rotated, so that each one revealed a dark, dark hole in its surface— a hole that corresponded in shape with the object itself. Jessica focused on the red pyramid, with its triangle-shaped opening.
The pyramid began to float toward her. Is this real, or all illusion? Startled, she opened her eyes wide and stared, transfixed.
The other two geometric shapes followed, until all three floated in front of Jessica’s face. Brilliant beams darted and arced, spectral streaks of color that made barely audible snappings and flowings.
Jessica’s curiosity mingled with fear.
Mohiam made her wait for many seconds, then said in an iron voice, “What is the first lesson? What have you been taught since you were a little girl?”
“Humans must never submit to animals, of course.” Jessica allowed a thread of anger and impatience to infiltrate her voice; Mohiam would know it was intentional. “After all you have trained in me, Proctor Superior, how can you suspect I am not human? When have I ever given you cause—”
“Silence. People are not always humans.” She came around the desk with the g
race of a hunting cat and peered at Jessica through the sparkling light between the cube and the pyramid.
The girl felt a nervous tickle in her throat, but didn’t cough or speak. From experience with this instructor, Jessica knew something more was coming. And it did.
“Ages ago, during the Butlerian Jihad, most people were merely organic automatons, following the commands of thinking machines. Beaten down, they never questioned, never resisted, never thought. They were people, but had lost the spark that made them human. Still, a core of their kind resisted. They fought back, refused to give up, and ultimately prevailed. They alone remembered what it was to be human. We must never forget the lessons of those perilous times.”
The Reverend Mother’s robes rustled as she moved to one side, and suddenly her arm moved with an astonishing flash of speed, a blur of motion. Jessica saw a fingertip needle poised at her cheek, just below her right eye.
The girl did not flinch. Mohiam’s papery lips formed a smile. “You know of the gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy that kills only animals— those who behave out of instinct instead of discipline. This point is coated with meta-cyanide. The tiniest prick, and you die.”
The needle remained motionless, as if frozen in air. Mohiam leaned closer to her ear. “Of the three objects before you, one is pain, another is pleasure, and the third is eternity. The Sisterhood uses these things in a variety of ways and combinations. For this test, you are to select the one that is most profound to you and experience it, if you dare. There will be no other questions. This is the entire test.”
Without moving her head, Jessica shifted her gaze to study each item. Utilizing her Bene Gesserit powers of observation— and something more, the source of which she did not know— she sensed pleasure in the pyramid, pain in the box, eternity in the sphere. She had never undergone a test like this before, and had never heard of it, though she knew of the gom jabbar, the legendary needle developed in ancient times.
“This is the test,” Reverend Mother Mohiam said. “If you fail, I will scratch you.”
Dune: House Harkonnen Page 29
