ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

  "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 re-examine 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 fire-sharpened 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 suggesti
on 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?"