ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

  "You were prepared to kill me," he said.

  No one answered. There was no need. They all recognized Mentat Projection.

  Teg turned and looked back into the room where he had regained his memories. Sheeana was gone. More memories whispered at the edge of awareness. They would speak in their own time. This diminutive body. That was difficult. And Streggi... He focused on Odrade. "You were more clever than you thought. But my mother..."

  "I don't think she anticipated this," Odrade said.

  "No... she was not that much Atreides."

  An electrifying word in these circumstances, it charged a special silence in the room. The Proctors moved closer.

  That mother of his!

  Teg ignored the hovering Proctors. "In answer to the questions you have not asked, I cannot explain what happened to me on Gammu. My physical and mental speed defies explanation. Given the size and energy, in one of your heartbeats I could be clear of this room and well on my way out of the ship. Ohhh..." hand upraised. "I'm still your obedient dog. I'll do what you require, but perhaps not in the way you imagine."

  Odrade saw consternation in the faces of her Sisters. What have I loosed upon us?

  "We can prevent any living thing from leaving this ship," she said. "You may be fast but I doubt you are faster than the fire that would engulf you should you try to leave without our permission."

  "I will leave in my own good time and with your permission. How many of Burzmali's special troops do you have?"

  "Almost two million." Startled out of her.

  "So many!"

  "He had more than twice that number with him at Lampadas when Honored Matres obliterated them."

  "We shall have to be more clever than poor Burzmali. Would you leave me to discuss this with Duncan? That is why you keep us around, isn't it? Our specialty?" He aimed a smiling look at the overhead comeyes. "I'm sure you'll review our discussion thoroughly before approving."

  Odrade and her Sisters exchanged glances. They shared an unspoken question: What else can we do?

  As she stood, Odrade looked at Idaho. "Here's a real job for a Truthsayer-Mentat!"

  When the women were gone, Teg pulled himself up onto one of the chairs and looked into the empty room visible beyond the seewall. It had been close there and he still felt his heart pumping hard from the effort. "Quite a show," he said.

  "I've seen better." Extremely dry.

  "What I'd like right now is a large glass of Marinete, but I doubt this body could take it."

  "Bell will be waiting for Dar when she gets back to Central," Idaho said.

  "To the nethermost hell with Bell! We have to defuse those Honored Matres before they find us."

  "And our Bashar has just the plan."

  "Damn that title!"

  Idaho inhaled a sharp breath restricted by shock.

  "Tell you something, Duncan!" Intense. "Once when I was arriving for an important meeting with potential enemies, I heard an aide announce me. 'The Bashar is here.' I damned near stumbled, caught by the abstraction."

  "Mentat blur."

  "Of course it was. But I knew the title removed me from something I did not dare lose. Bashar? I was more than that! I was Miles Teg, the name given me by my parents."

  "You were on the name-chain!"

  "Certainly, and I realized my name stood at a distance from something more primal. Miles Teg? No, I was more basic than that. I could hear my mother saying, 'Oh, what a beautiful baby.' So there I was with another name: 'Beautiful Baby.' "

  "Did you go deeper?" Idaho found himself fascinated.

  "I was caught. Name leads to name leads to name leads to nameless. When I walked into that important room, I was nameless. Did you ever risk that?"

  "Once." A reluctant admission.

  "We all do it at least once. But there I was. I'd been briefed. I had a reference for everyone at that table - face, name, title, plus all of the backgrounding."

  "But you weren't really there."

  "Oh, I could see the expectant faces measuring me, wondering, worrying. But they did not know me!"

  "That gave you a feeling of great power?"

  "Exactly as we were warned in Mentat school. I asked myself: 'Is this Mind at its beginning?' Don't laugh. It's a tantalizing question."

  "So you went deeper?" Caught by Teg's words, Idaho ignored tugs of warning at the edge of his awareness.

  "Oh, yes. And I found myself in the famous 'Hall of Mirrors' they described and warned us to flee."

  "So you remembered how to get out and..."

  "Remembered? You've obviously been there. Did memory get you out?"

  "It helped."

  "Despite the warnings, I lingered, seeing my 'self of selves' and infinite permutations. Reflections of reflections ad infinitum."

  "Fascination of the 'ego core.' Damn few ever escape from that depth. You were lucky."

  "I'm not sure it should be called luck. I knew there must be a First Awareness, an awakening..."

  "Which discovers it is not the first."

  "But I wanted a self at the root of the self!"

  "Didn't the people at this meeting notice anything odd about you?"

  "I found out later I sat down with a wooden expression that concealed these mental gymnastics."

  "You didn't speak?"

  "I was struck dumb. This was interpreted as 'the Bashar's expected reticence.' So much for reputation."

  Idaho started to smile and remembered the comeyes. He saw at once how the watchdogs would interpret such revelations. Wild talent in a dangerous descendant of the Atreides! Sisters knew about the mirrors. Anyone who escaped must be suspect. What did the mirrors show him?

  As though he heard the dangerous question, Teg said: " I was caught and knew it. I could visualize myself as a bedridden vegetable but I didn't care. The mirrors were everything until, like something floating up out of water, I saw my mother. She looked more or less the way she had just before she died."

  Idaho inhaled a trembling breath. Didn't Teg know what he had just said for the comeyes to record?

  "The Sisters will now imagine I'm at least a potential Kwisatz Haderach," Teg said. "Another Muad'Dib. Bullcrap! As you're so fond of saying, Duncan. Neither of us would risk that. We know what he created and we're not stupid!"

  Idaho could not swallow. Would they accept Teg's words? He spoke the truth but still...

  "She took my hand," Teg said. "I could feel it! And she led me right out of the Hall. I expected her to be with me when I felt myself seated at the table. My hand still tingled from her touch but she was gone. I knew that. I just brought myself to attention and took over. The Sisterhood had important advantages to gain there and I gained them."

  "Something your mother planted in -"

  "No! I saw her the same way Reverend Mothers see Other Memory. It was her way of saying: 'Why the hell are you wasting time here when there's work to do?' She has never left me, Duncan. The past never leaves any of us."

  Idaho abruptly saw the purpose behind Teg's recital. Honesty and candor, indeed!

  "You have Other Memory!"

  "No! Except what anyone has in emergencies. The Hall of Mirrors was an emergency and it also let me see and feel the source of help. But I'm not going back there!"

  Idaho accepted this. Most Mentats risked one dip into Infinity and learned the transient nature of names and titles but Teg's account was much more than a statement about Time as flow and tableau.

  "I figured it was time we introduced ourselves fully to the Bene Gesserit," Teg said. "They should know how far they can trust us. There's work to do and we've wasted enough time on stupidities."

  ***

  Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom. (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?

  - The Dortujla Record

  The day of Dortujla's return did not go well for Odrade. A weapons conference with Teg and Idaho ended without decision. She had sensed the hunter's axe all du
ring the meeting and knew this colored her reactions.

  Then the afternoon session with Murbella - words, words, words. Murbella was tangled in questions of philosophy. A dead end if Odrade had ever encountered one.

  Now she stood in the early evening at the westernmost edge of' Central's perimeter paving. It was one of her favorite places, but Bellonda beside her deprived Odrade of the anticipated quiet enjoyment.

  Sheeana found them there and asked: "Is it true you have given Murbella the freedom of the ship?"

  "There!" This was one of Bellonda's deepest fears.

  "Bell," Odrade cut her off and pointed at the ring orchards. "That little rise over there where we've planted no trees. I want you to order a Folly in that place, built to my requirements. A gazebo with lattice framing for the views."

  No stopping Bellonda now. Odrade had seldom seen her this incensed. And the more Bellonda ranted, the more adamant Odrade became.

  "You want a... a Folly? In that orchard? What else will you waste our substance on? Folly! A most appropriate label for another of your..."

  It was a silly argument. Both of them knew it twenty words into the thing. Mother Superior could not unbend first and Bell seldom unbent for anything. Even when Odrade fell silent, Bellonda charged onward into empty ramparts. At the end, when Bellonda ran out of energy, Odrade said: "You owe me a fine dinner, Bell. See that it's the best you can arrange."

  "Owe you..." Bellonda started to splutter.

  "A peace offering," Odrade said. "I want it served in my gazebo... my Fancy Folly."

  When Sheeana laughed, Bellonda was forced to join but with an icy edge. She knew when she had been out-faced.

  "Everyone will see it and say: 'See how confident Mother Superior is,' " Sheeana said.

  "So you want it for morale!" At this point, Bellonda would have accepted almost any justification.

  Odrade beamed at Sheeana. My clever little darling! Not only had Sheeana ceased teasing Bellonda, she had taken to reinforcing the older woman's self-esteem wherever possible. Bell knew it, of course, and there remained an inevitable Bene Gesserit question: Why?

  Recognizing the suspicion, Sheeana said: "We're really arguing about Miles and Duncan. And I, for one, am sick of it."

  "If I just knew what you were really doing, Dar!" Bellonda said.

  "Energy has its own patterns, Bell!"

  "What do you mean?" Quite startled.

  "They are going to find us, Bell. And I know how."

  Bellonda actually gaped.

  "We are slaves of our habits," Odrade said. "Slaves of energies we create. Can slaves break free? Bell, you know the problem as well as I do."

  For once, Bellonda was nonplussed.

  Odrade stared at her.

  Pride, that was what Odrade saw when she looked at her Sisters and their places. Dignity was only a mask. No real humility. Instead, there was this visible conformity, a true Bene Gesserit pattern that, in a society aware of the peril in patterns, sounded a warning klaxon.

  Sheeana was confused. "Habits?"

  "Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. Slaves to what we have done. We are addicted to Honored Matres and they to us!"

  "More of your damned romanticism!" Bellonda said.

  "Yes, I'm a romantic... in the same way the Tyrant was. He sensitized himself to the fixed shape of his creation. I am sensitive to his prescient trap."

  But oh how close the hunter and oh how deep the pit.

  Bellonda was not placated. "You said you know how they will find us."

  "They have only to recognize their own habits and they...

  Yes?" This was to an acolyte messenger emerging from a covered passage behind Bellonda.

  "Mother Superior, it's Reverend Mother Dortujla. Mother Fintil has brought her to the Landing Flat and they will be here within the hour."

  "Bring her to my workroom!" Odrade looked at Bellonda with a stare that was almost wild. "Has she said anything?"

  "Mother Dortujla is ill," the acolyte said.

  Ill? What an extraordinary thing to say about a Reverend Mother.

  "Reserve judgment." It was Bellonda-Mentat speaking, Bellonda foe of romanticism and wild imagination.

  "Get Tam up there as an observer," Odrade said.

  Dortujla hobbled in on a cane with Fintil and Streggi helping her. There was a firmness to Dortujla's eyes, though, and a sense of measuring behind every look she focused on her surroundings. She had her hood thrown back revealing hair the dark mottled brown of antique ivory and when she spoke her voice conveyed a sense of fatigue.

  "I have done as you ordered, Mother Superior." As Fintil and Streggi left the room, Dortujla sat without being invited, a slingchair beside Bellonda. Brief glances at Sheeana and Tamalane on her left, then a hard stare at Odrade. "They will meet with you on Junction. They think the place is their own idea and your Spider Queen is there!"

  "How soon?" Sheeana asked.

  "They want one hundred Standard days counting from just about now. I can be more precise if you want."

  "Why so long?" Odrade asked.

  "My opinion? They will use the time to reinforce their defenses on Junction."

  "What guarantees?" That was Tam, terse as usual.

  "Dortujla, what has happened to you?" Odrade was shocked by the trembling weakness apparent in the woman.

  "They conducted experiments on me. But that is not important. The arrangements are. For what it's worth, they promise you safe passage in and out of Junction. Don't believe it. You are allowed a small entourage of servants, no more than five. Assume they will kill everyone who accompanies you, although... I may have taught them the error in that."

  "They expect me to bring submission of the Bene Gesserit?" Odrade's voice had never been colder. Dortujla's words raised a specter of tragedy.

  "That was the inducement."

  "The Sisters who went with you?" Sheeana asked.

  Dortujla tapped her forehead, a common Sisterhood gesture. "I have them. We agree the Honored Matres should be punished."

  "Dead?" Odrade forced the word between tight lips.

  "Attempting to force me into their ranks. 'You see? We will kill another one if you don't agree.' I told them to kill us all and have done with it and to forget about meeting Mother Superior. They did not accept this until they ran out of hostages."

  "You Shared them all?" Tamalane asked. Yes, that would be Tam's concern as she neared her own death.

  "While pretending to assure myself they were dead. You may as well know the whole thing. These women are grotesque! They possess caged Futars. The bodies of my Sisters were thrown into the cages where the Futars ate them. The Spider Queen - an appropriate name - made me watch this."

  "Disgusting!" Bellonda said.

  Dortujla sighed. "They did not know, naturally, that I have worse visions in Other Memory."

  "They sought to overwhelm your sensibilities," Odrade said. "Foolish. Were they surprised when you didn't react as they wished?"

  "Chagrined, I would say. I think they had seen others react as I did. I told them it was as good a way as any to get fertilizer. I believe that angered them."

  "Cannibalism," Tamalane muttered.

  "Only in appearance," Dortujla said. "Futars definitely are not human. Barely tamed wild animals."

  "No Handlers?" Odrade asked.

  "I saw none. The Futars did speak. They said, 'Eat!' before they ate and they jibed at Honored Matres around them. 'You hungry?' That sort of thing. More important was what happened after they ate."

  Dortujla lapsed into a fit of coughing. "They tried poisons," she said. "Stupid women!"

  When she regained her breath, Dortujla said, "A Futar came to the bars of its cage after their... banquet? It looked at the Spider Queen and it screamed. I have never heard such a sound. Chilling! Every Honored Matre in that room froze and I swear to
you they were terrified."

  Sheeana touched Dortujla's arm. "A predator immobilizing its prey?"

  "Undoubtedly. It had qualities of Voice. The Futars appeared surprised that it did not freeze me."

  "The Honored Matres' reaction?" Bellonda asked. Yes, a Mentat would require that datum.

  "A general clamor when they found their voices. Many shouted for Great Honored Matre to destroy the Futars. She, however, took a calmer view. 'Too valuable alive,' she said."

  "A hopeful sign," Tamalane said.

  Odrade looked at Bellonda. "I will order Streggi to bring the Bashar here. Objections?"

  Bellonda gave a curt nod. They knew the gamble must be taken despite questions about Teg's intentions.

  To Dortujla, Odrade said: "I want you in my own guest quarters. We'll bring in Suks. Order what you need and prepare for a full Council meeting. You are a special advisor."

  Dortujla spoke while struggling to her feet. "I've not slept in almost fifteen days and I will need a special meal."

  "Sheeana, see to that and get the Suks up here. Tam, stay with the Bashar and Streggi. Regular reports. He'll want to go to the cantonment and take personal charge. Get him a comlink with Duncan. Nothing must impede them."

  "You want me here with him?" Tamalane asked.

  "You are his leech. Streggi takes him nowhere without your knowledge. He wants Duncan as Weapons Master. Make sure he accepts Duncan's confinement in the ship. Bell, any weapons data Duncan requires - priority. Comments?"

  There were no comments. Thoughts about consequences, yes, but the decisiveness of Odrade's behavior infected them.

  Sitting back, Odrade closed her eyes and waited until silence told her she was alone. The comeyes were still watching, of course.

  They know I'm tired. Who wouldn't be under these circumstances? Three more Sisters killed by those monsters! Bashar! They must feel our lash and know the lesson!

  When she heard Streggi arrive with Teg, Odrade opened her eyes. Streggi led him in by the hand but there was something about them saying this was not an adult guiding a child. Teg's movements said he gave Streggi permission to treat him this way. She would have to be warned.

  Tam followed and went to a chair near the windows directly beneath the bust of Chenoeh. Significant positioning? Tam did strange things lately.