ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

  "I think it's very wise, Shoel." Love speaking. She did not really know what he meant.

  "My precious love," he said, cradling her head on his arm, "Truthsayers have a Truthsense that, once awakened, works all the time. Please don't tell me I'm wise when it's your love speaking."

  "I'm sorry, Shoel." She liked the smell of his arm and buried her head in the crook of it, tickling him. "But I want to know everything you know."

  He pushed her head into a more comfortable position. "You know what my Third Stage instructor said? 'Know nothing! Learn to be totally naive.' "

  She was astonished. "Nothing at all?"

  "You approach everything with a clean slate, nothing on you or in you. Whatever comes is written there by itself."

  She began to see it. "Nothing to interfere."

  "Correct. You are the original ignorant savage, completely unsophisticated to the point where you back right into ultimate sophistication. You find it without looking for it, you might say."

  "Now, that is wise, Shoel. I'll bet you were the best student they ever had, the quickest and the -"

  "I thought it was interminable nonsense."

  "You didn't!"

  "Until one day I read a little twitch in me. It wasn't the movement of a muscle or something someone else might detect. Just a... a twitch."

  "Where was it?"

  "Nowhere I could describe. But my Fourth Stage instructor had prepared me for it. 'Grab that thing with gentle hands. Delicately.' One of the students thought he meant your real hands. Oh, how we laughed."

  "That was cruel." She touched his cheek and felt the beginning of his dark stubble. It was late but she did not feel sleepy.

  "I suppose it was cruel. But when the twitch came, I knew it. I had never felt such a thing before. I was surprised by it, too, because knowing it then, I knew it had been there all along. It was familiar. It was my Truthsense twitching."

  She thought she could feel Truthsense stirring within herself. The feeling of wonder in his voice aroused something.

  "It was mine then," he said. "It belonged to me and I belonged to it. No separation ever again."

  "How wonderful that must be." Awe and envy in her voice.

  "No! Some of it I hate. Seeing some people this way is like seeing them eviscerated, their guts hanging out."

  "That's disgusting!"

  "Yes, but there are compensations, love. There are people you meet, people who are like beautiful flowers extended to you by an innocent child. Innocence. My own innocence responds and my Truthsense is strengthened. That is what you do for me, my love."

  The no-ship of the Honored Matres arrived at Gammu and they sent her down to the Landing Flat in the garbage lighter. It disgorged her beside the ship's discards and excrement but she did not mind. Home! I'm home and Lampadas survives.

  The Rabbi, however, did not share her enthusiasm.

  Once more, they sat in his study, but now she felt more familiar with Other Memory, much more confident. He could see this.

  "You are even more like them than ever! It's unclean."

  "Rabbi, we all have unclean ancestors. I am fortunate in that I know some of mine."

  "What is this? What are you saying?"

  "All of us are descendants of people who did nasty things, Rabbi. We don't like to think of barbarians in our ancestry but they're there. "

  "Such talk!"

  "Reverend Mothers can recall them all, Rabbi. Remember, it is the victors who breed. You understand?"

  "I've never heard you talk so boldly. What has happened to you, daughter?"

  " I survived, knowing that victory sometimes is achieved at a moral price."

  "What is this? These are evil words."

  "Evil? Barbarism is not even the proper word for some of the evil things our ancestors did. The ancestors of all of us, Rabbi."

  She saw she had hurt him and felt the cruelty of her own words but could not stop. How could he escape the truth of what she said? He was an honorable man.

  She spoke more softly but her words cut him even deeper. "Rabbi, if you shared witness to some of the things Other Memory has forced me to know, you would come back seeking new words for evil. Some things our ancestors have done debase the worst label you could imagine."

  "Rebecca... Rebecca... I know necessities of... "

  "Don't make excuses about 'necessities of the times'! You, a Rabbi, know better. When are we without a moral sense? It's just that sometimes we don't listen."

  He put his hands over his face, rocking back and forth in the old chair. It creaked mournfully.

  "Rabbi, you I have always loved and respected. I went through the Agony for you. I shared Lampadas for you. Do not deny what I have learned from this."

  He lowered his hands. " I do not deny, daughter. But permit me my pain."

  "Out of all these realizations, Rabbi, the thing I must deal with most immediately and without respite is that there are no innocents. "

  "Rebecca!"

  "Guilty may not be the right word, Rabbi, but our ancestors did things for which payment must be made."

  "That I understand, Rebecca. It is a balance that -"

  "Don't tell me you understand when I know you don't." She stood and glared down at him. "It's not a balance book that you set aright. How far back would you go?"

  "Rebecca, I am your Rabbi. You must not talk this way, especially to me."

  "The farther back you go, Rabbi, the worse the evil atrocities and higher the price. You cannot go back that far but I am forced to it. "

  Turning, she left him, ignoring the pleading in his voice, the painful way he said her name. As she closed the door, she heard him say: "What have we done? Israel, help her."

  ***

  The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

  - The Bashar Teg

  When left to his own devices, Idaho often explored his no-ship prison. So much to see and learn about this Ixian artifact. It was a cave of wonders.

  He paused on this afternoon's restless walk through his quarters and looked at the tiny comeyes built into the glittering surface of a doorway. They were watching him. He had the odd sensation of seeing himself through those prying eyes. What did the Sisters think when they looked at him? The blocky ghola-child from Gammu's long-dead Keep had become a lanky man: dark skin and hair. The hair was longer than when he had entered this no-ship on the last day of Dune.

  Bene Gesserit eyes peered below the skin. He was sure they suspected he was a Mentat and he feared how they might interpret that. How could a Mentat expect to hide the fact from Reverend Mothers indefinitely? Foolishness! He knew they already suspected him of Truthsay.

  He waved at the comeyes and said: "I'm restless. I think I'll explore."

  Bellonda hated it when he took that jocular attitude toward surveillance. She did not like him to roam the ship. She did not try to hide it from him. He could see the unspoken question in her glowering features whenever she came to confront him: "Is he looking for a way to escape?"

  Exactly what I'm doing, Bell, but not in the way you suspect.

  The no-ship presented him with fixed limits: the exterior forcefield he could not penetrate, certain machinery areas where the drive (so he was told) had been temporarily disabled, guard quarters (he could see into some of them but not enter), the armory, the section reserved to the captive Tleilaxu, Scytale. He occasionally met Scytale at one of the barriers and they peered at each other across the silencing field that held them apart. Then there was the information barrier - sections of Shiprecords that would not respond to his questions, answers his warders would not give.

  Within these limits lay a lifetime of things to see and learn, even the lifetime of some three hundred Standard Years he could reasonably expect.

  If Honored Matres do not find us.

  Idaho saw himself as the game they sought, wanting him even more than they wanted the women of
Chapterhouse. He had no illusions about what the hunters would do to him. They knew he was here. The men he trained in sexual bonding and sent out to plague the Honored Matres - those men taunted the hunters.

  When the Sisters learned of his Mentat ability they would know immediately that his mind carried the memories of more than one ghola lifetime. The original did not have that talent. They would suspect he was a latent Kwisatz Haderach. Look how they rationed his melange. They were clearly terrified of repeating the mistake they had made with Paul Atreides and his Tyrant son. Thirty-five hundred years of bondage!

  But dealing with Murbella required Mentat awareness. He entered every encounter with her not expecting to achieve answers then or later. It was a typical Mentat approach: concentrate on the questions. Mentats accumulated questions the way others accumulated answers. Questions created their own patterns and systems. This produced the most important shapes. You looked at your universe through self-created patterns - all composed of images, words, and labels (everything temporary), all mingled in sensory impulses that reflected off his internal constructs the way light bounced from bright surfaces.

  Idaho's original Mentat instructor had formed the temporary words for that first tentative construct: "Watch for consistent movements against your internal screen."

  From that first hesitant dip into Mentat powers, Idaho could trace the growth of a sensitivity to changes in his own observations, always becoming Mentat.

  Bellonda was his most severe trial. He dreaded her penetrating gaze and slashing questions. Mentat probing Mentat. He met her forays delicately, with reserve and patience. Now, what are you after?

  As if he didn't know.

  He wore patience as a mask. But fear came naturally and there was no harm in showing it. Bellonda did not hide her wish to see him dead.

  Idaho accepted the fact that soon the watchers would see only one possible source for the skills he was forced to use.

  A Mentat's real skills lay in that mental construct they called "the great synthesis." It required a patience that non-Mentats did not even imagine possible. Mentat schools defined it as perseverance. You were a primitive tracker, able to read minuscule signs, tiny disturbances in the environment, and follow where these led. At the same time, you remained open to broad motions all around and within. This produced naivete, the basic Mentat posture, akin to that of Truthsayers but far more sweeping.

  "You are open to whatever the universe may do," his first instructor had said. "Your mind is not a computer; it is a response-tool keyed to whatever your senses display."

  Idaho always recognized when Bellonda's senses were open. She stood there, gaze slightly withdrawn, and he knew few preconceptions cluttered her mind. His defense lay in her basic flaw: Opening the senses required an idealism that was foreign to Bellonda. She did not ask the best questions and he wondered at this. Would Odrade use a flawed Mentat? It went against her other performances.

  I seek the questions that form the best images.

  Doing this, you never thought of yourself as clever, that you had the formula to provide the solution. You remained as responsive to new questions as you did to new patterns. Testing, re-testing, shaping and re-shaping. A constant process, never stopping, never satisfied. It was your own private pavane, similar to that of other Mentats but it carried always your own unique posture and steps.

  "You are never truly a Mentat. That is why we call it 'The Endless Goal.' " The words of his teachers were burned into his awareness.

  As he accumulated observations of Bellonda, he came to appreciate a viewpoint of those great Mentat Masters who had taught him. "Reverend Mothers do not make the best Mentats."

  No Bene Gesserit appeared capable of completely removing herself from that binding absolute she achieved in the Spice Agony: loyalty to her Sisterhood.

  His teachers had warned against absolutes. They created a serious flaw in a Mentat.

  "Everything you do, everything you sense and say is experiment. No deduction final. Nothing stops until dead and perhaps not even then, because each life creates endless ripples. Induction bounces within and you sensitize yourself to it. Deduction conveys illusions of absolutes. Kick the truth and shatter it!"

  When Bellonda's questions touched on the relationship between himself and Murbella, he saw vague emotional responses. Amusement? Jealousy? He could accept amusement (and even jealousy) about the compelling sexual demands of this mutual addiction. Is the ecstasy truly that great?

  He wandered through his quarters this afternoon feeling displaced, as though newly here and not yet accepting these rooms as home. That is emotion talking to me.

  Over the years of his confinement, these quarters had taken on a lived-in appearance. This was his cave, the former supercargo suite: large rooms with slightly curved walls - bedroom, library-workroom, sitting room, a green-tiled bath with dry and wet cleansing systems, and a long practice hall he shared with Murbella for exercise.

  The rooms bore a unique collection of artifacts and marks of his presence: that slingchair placed at just the right angle to the console and projector linking him to Shipsystems, those ridulian records on that low side table. And there were stains of occupancy - that dark brown blot on the worktable. Spilled food had left its indelible mark.

  He moved restlessly into his sleeping quarters. The light was dimmer. His ability to identify the familiar held true for odors. There was a saliva-like smell to the bed - the residue of last night's sexual collision.

  That is the proper word: Collision.

  The no-ship's air-filtered, recycled and sweetened - often bored him. No break in the no-ship maze to the exterior world ever remained open long. He sometimes sat silently sniffing, hoping for a faint trace of air that had not been adjusted to this prison's demands.

  There is a way to escape!

  He wandered out of his quarters and down the corridor, took the dropchute at the end of the passage and emerged in the ship's lowest level.

  What is really happening out there in that world open to the sky?

  The bits Odrade told him about events filled him with dread and a trapped feeling. No place to run! Am I wise to share my fears with Sheeana? Murbella merely laughed. "I will protect you, love. Honored Matres won't hurt me." Another false dream.

  But Sheeana... how quickly she had picked up the hand-language and entered the spirit of his conspiracy. Conspiracy? No... I doubt that any Reverend Mother will act against her Sisters. Even the Lady Jessica went back to them in the end. But I don't ask Sheeana to act against the Sisterhood, only that she protect us from Murbella's folly.

  The enormous powers of the hunters made only the destruction predictable. A Mentat had but to look at their disruptive violence. They brought something else as well, something hinting at matters out there in the Scattering. What were these Futars Odrade mentioned with such casualness? Part human, part beast? That had been Lucilla's guess. And where is Lucilla?

  He found himself presently in the Great Hold, the kilometer-long cargo space where they had carried the last giant sandworm of Dune, bringing it to Chapterhouse. The area still smelled of spice and sand, filling his mind with long-ago and the dead far away. He knew why he came so often to the Great Hold, doing it sometimes without even thinking, as he had just done. It both attracted and repelled. The illusion of unlimited space with traces of dust, sand, and spice carried the nostalgia of lost freedoms. But there was another side. This is where it always happened to him.

  Will it happen today?

  Without warning, the sense of being in the Great Hold would vanish. Then... the net shimmering in a molten sky. He was aware when the vision came that he was not really seeing a net. His mind translated what the senses could not define.

  A shimmering net undulating like an infinite borealis.

  Then the net would part and he would see the two people - man and woman. How ordinary they appeared and yet extraordinary. A grandmother and grandfather in antique clothing: bib coveralls for the man and a long d
ress with headscarf for the woman. Working in a flower garden! He thought it must be more of the illusion. I am seeing this but it is not really what I see.

  They always noticed him eventually. He heard their voices. "There he is again, Marty," the man would say, calling the woman's attention to Idaho.

  "I wonder how it is he can look through?" Marty asked once. "Doesn't seem possible."

  "He's spread pretty thin, I think. Wonder if he knows the danger?"

  Danger. That was the word that always jerked him out of the vision.

  "Not at your console today?"

  For just an instant, Idaho thought it was the vision, the voice of that odd woman, then he realized it was Odrade. Her voice came from close behind. He whirled and saw he had failed to close the hatch. She had followed him into the Hold, stalking him quietly, avoiding the scattered patches of sand that might have grated underfoot and betrayed her approach.

  She looked tired and impatient. Why did she think I would be at my console?

  As though answering his unspoken question, she said: " I find you at your console so often lately. For what do you search, Duncan?"

  He shook his head without speaking. Why do I suddenly feel in peril?

  It was a rare feeling in Odrade's company. He could remember other occasions, though. Once when she had stared suspiciously at his hands in the field of his console. Fear associated with my console. Do I reveal my Mentat hunger for data? Do they guess that I have hidden my private self there?

  "Do I get no privacy at all?" Anger and attack.

  She shook her head slowly from side to side as much as to say, "You can do better than that."

  "This is your second visit today," he accused.

  "I must say you're looking well, Duncan." More circumlocution.

  "Is that what your watchers say?"

  "Don't be petty. I came for a chat with Murbella. She said you'd be down here."

  "I suppose you know Murbella's pregnant again." Was that trying to placate her?

  "For which we are grateful. I came to tell you that Sheeana wants to visit you again."