ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

  I was wrong to assume they responded to display of their disasters.

  He glanced at Odrade. "That Great Honored Matre in there, did she give the command for defense to stop?"

  "That's my assumption."

  Cautious and a typical Bene Gesserit answer. She, too, was subjecting the scene to careful observation.

  Was her assumption a reasonable explanation for the abruptness with which defenders threw down their arms?

  Why would they do it? To prevent more bloodshed?

  Given the callousness Honored Matres usually demonstrated, that was unlikely. The decision had been made for reasons that plagued him.

  A trap?

  Now that he thought about it, there were other strange things about the battle scene. None of the usual calls from wounded, no scurrying about with cries for stretchers and medics. He could see Suks moving among the bodies. That, at least, was familiar, but every figure they examined was left where it had fallen.

  All dead? No wounded?

  He experienced gripping fear. Not an unusual fear in battle but he had learned to read it. Something profoundly wrong. Noises, things within his view, the smells took on a new intensity. He felt himself acutely attuned, a predatory animal in the jungle, knowing his terrain but aware of something intrusive that must be identified lest he become hunted instead of hunter. He registered his surroundings at a different level of consciousness, reading himself as well, searching out arousal patterns that had achieved this response. Streggi trembled beneath him. So she felt his distress.

  "Something's very wrong here," Odrade said.

  He pushed a hand at her, demanding silence. Even in this tower surrounded by victorious troops, he felt exposed to a threat his clamoring senses failed to reveal.

  Danger!

  He was sure of it. The unknown frustrated him. It required every bit of his training to keep from falling into a nervous fugue.

  Nudging Streggi to turn, Teg barked an order to an aide standing in the balcony doorway. The aide listened quietly and ran to obey. They must get casualty figures. How many wounded compared to deaths? Reports on captured weapons. Urgent!

  When he returned to his examination of the scene, he saw another disturbing thing, a basic oddity his eyes had tried to report. Very little blood on those fallen figures in Bene Gesserit uniforms. You expected battle casualties to show that ultimate evidence of common humanity - flowing red that darkened on exposure but always left its indelible mark in the memories of those who saw it. Lack of bloody carnage was an unknown and, in warfare, unknowns had a history of bringing extreme peril.

  He spoke softly to Odrade. "They have a weapon we have not discovered."

  ***

  Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.

  - Bene Gesserit Advice to Postulants

  Sheeana smelled worms at a distance: cinnamon undertones of melange mingled with bitter flint and brimstone, the crystal-banked inferno of the great Rakian sand-eaters. But she sensed these tiny descendents only because they existed out there in such numbers.

  They are so small.

  It had been hot here at Desert Watch today and now in late afternoon she welcomed the artificially cooled interior. There was a tolerable temperature adjustment in her old quarters although the window on the west had been left open. Sheeana went to that window and stared out at glaring sand.

  Memory told her what this vantage would be tonight: starlight bright in dry air, thin illumination on sand waves that reached to a darkly curved horizon. She remembered Rakian moons and missed them. Stars alone did not satisfy her Fremen heritage.

  She had thought of this as retreat, a place and time to think about what was happening to her Sisterhood.

  Axlotl tanks, Cyborgs, and now this.

  Odrade's plan held no mysteries since their Sharing. A gamble? And if it succeeded?

  We will know perhaps tomorrow and then what will we become?

  She admitted to a magnet in Desert Watch, more than a place to consider consequences. She had walked in sun-scorched heat today, proving to herself she could still call worms with her dance, emotion expressed as action.

  Dance of Propitiation. My language of the worms.

  She had gone dervish-whirling on a dune until hunger shattered her memory-trance. And little worms were spread all around in gaping watchfulness, remembered flames within the frames of crystal teeth.

  But why so small?

  The words of investigators explained but did not satisfy. "It is the dampness."

  Sheeana recalled giant Shai-hulud of Dune, "the Old Man of the Desert," large enough to swallow spice factories, ring surfaces hard as plascrete. Masters in their own domain. God and devil in the sands. She sensed the potential from her window vantage.

  Why did the Tyrant choose symbiotic existence in a worm?

  Did those tiny worms carry his endless dream?

  Sandtrout inhabited this desert. Accept them as a new skin and she might follow the Tyrant's path.

  Metamorphosis. The Divided God.

  She knew the lure.

  Do I dare?

  Memories of her last moments of ignorance came over her - barely eight then, the month of Igat on Dune.

  Not Rakis. Dune, as my ancestors named it.

  Not difficult to recall herself as she had been: a slender, dark-skinned child, streaked brown hair. Melange hunter (because that was a task for children) running into open desert with childhood companions. How dear it felt in memory.

  But memory had its darker side. Focusing attention into the nostrils, a girl detected intense odors - a pre-spice mass!

  The Blow!

  Melange explosion brought Shaitan. No sandworm could resist a spice blow in its territory.

  You ate it all, Tyrant, that miserable collection of shacks and hovels we called "home" and all of my friends and family. Why did you spare me?

  What a rage had shaken that slender child. Everything she loved taken by a giant worm that refused her attempts to sacrifice herself in its flames and carried her into the hands of Rakian priests, thence to the Bene Gesserit.

  "She talks to the worms and they spare her."

  "They who spared me are not spared by me." That was what she had told Odrade.

  And now Odrade knows what I must do. You cannot suppress the wild thing, Dar. I dare call you Dar now that you are within me.

  No response.

  Was there a pearl of Leto II's awareness in each of the new sandworms? Her Fremen ancestors insisted on it.

  Someone handed her a sandwich. Walli, the senior acolyte assistant who had assumed command of Desert Watch.

  At my insistence when Odrade elevated me to the Council. But not just because Walli learned my immunity to Honored Matre sexual bonding. And not because she is sensitive to my needs. We speak a secret language, Walli and I.

  Walli's large eyes no longer were entrances to her soul. They were filmed barriers giving evidence she already knew how to block probing stares; a light blue pigmentation that soon would be all blue if she survived the Agony. Almost albino and a questionable genetic line for breeding. Walli's skin reinforced this judgment: pale and freckled. A skin you saw as a surface transparency. You did not focus on the skin itself but on what lay beneath: pink, blood-suffused flesh unprotected from a desert sun. Only here in the shade could Walli expose that sensitive surface to questioning eyes.

  Why this one in command over us?

  Because I trust her best to do what must be done.

  Sheeana ate the sandwich absently while she returned her attention to the sandscape. The whole planet thus one day. Another Dune? No... similar but different. How many such places are we creating in an infinite universe? Senseless question.

  Desert vagary placed a small black dot in the distance. Sheeana squinted. Ornithopter. It grew slowly larger and then smaller. Quartering the sand. Inspecting.

  What are we
really creating here?

  When she looked at encroaching dunes, she sensed hubris.

  Look upon my works, tiny human, and despair.

  But we did this, my Sisters and I.

  Did you?

  "I can feel a new dryness in the heat," Walli said.

  Sheeana agreed. No need to speak. She went to the large worktable while she still had daylight to study the topomap spread out there: little flags sticking in it, green thread on pushpins just as she had designed it.

  Odrade had asked once: "Is this really preferable to a projection?"

  "I need to touch it."

  Odrade accepted that.

  Projections palled. Too far removed from dirt. You could not draw a finger down a projection and say, "We will go down here." A finger in a projection was a finger in empty air.

  Eyes are never enough. The body must feel its world.

  Sheeana detected pungency of male perspiration, a musty smell of exertion. She lifted her head and saw a dark young man standing in the doorway, arrogant pose, arrogant look.

  "Oh," he said. "I thought you would be alone, Walli. I'll come back later."

  One piercing stare at Sheeana and he was gone.

  There are many things the body must feel to know them.

  "Sheeana, why are you here?" Walli asked.

  You who are so busy on the Council, what do you seek? Don't you trust me?

  "I came to consider what the Missionaria still thinks I may do. They see a weapon - the myths of Dune. Billions pray to me: 'The Holy One who spoke to the Divided God.' "

  "Billions is not an adequate number," Walli said.

  "But it measures the force my Sisters see in me. Those worshipers believe I died with Dune. I've become 'a powerful spirit in the pantheon of the oppressed.' "

  "More than a missionary?"

  "What might happen, Walli, if I appeared in that waiting universe, a sandworm beside me? The potential of such a thing fills some of my Sisters with hope and misgivings."

  "Misgivings I understand."

  Indeed. The very kind of religious implant Muad'Dib and his Tyrant son set loose on unsuspecting humankind.

  "Why do they even consider it?" Walli insisted.

  "With me as fulcrum, what a lever they would have to move the universe!"

  "But how could they control such a force?"

  "That is the problem. Something so inherently unstable. Religions are never really controllable. But some Sisters think they could aim a religion built around me."

  "And if their aim is poor?"

  "They say the religions of women always flow deeper."

  "True?" Questioning a superior source.

  Sheeana could only nod. Other Memory confirmed it.

  "Why?"

  "Because within us, life renews itself."

  "That's all of it?" Openly doubting.

  "Women often bear the aura of underdog. Humans reserve a special sympathy for ones at the bottom. I am a woman and if Honored Matres want me dead then I must be blessed."

  "You sound as though you agree with the Missionaria."

  "When you're one of the hunted, you consider any path of escape. I am revered. I cannot ignore the potential."

  Nor the danger. So my name has become a shining light in the darkness of Honored Matre oppression. How easy for that light to become a consuming flame!

  No... the plan she and Duncan had worked out was better. Escape from Chapterhouse. It was a death trap not only for its inhabitants but for Bene Gesserit dreams.

  "I still don't understand why you're here. We may no longer be hunted."

  "May?"

  "But why just now?"

  I cannot speak it openly because then the watchdogs would know.

  "I have this fascination with worms. It's partly because one of my ancestors led the original migration to Dune."

  You remember this, Walli. We spoke of it once out there on the sand with only the two of us to hear. And now you know why I have come visiting.

  "I remember you saying she was a proper Fremen."

  "And a Zensunni Master."

  I will lead my own migration, Walli. But I will need worms only you can provide. And it must be done quickly. The reports from Junction urge speed. And the first ships will return soon. Tonight... tomorrow. I fear what they bring.

  "Are you still interested in taking a few worms back to Central where you can study them closely?"

  Oh, yes, Walli! You do remember.

  "It might be interesting. I don't have much time for such things but any knowledge we gain may help us."

  "It will be too wet for them back there."

  "The great Hold of the no-ship on the Flat could be reconverted into a desert lab. Sand, controlled atmosphere. The essentials are there from when we brought the first worm."

  Sheeana glanced at the western window. "Sunset. I would like to go down again and walk on the sand."

  Will the first ships return tonight?

  "Of course, Reverend Mother." Walli stood aside, opening the way to the door.

  Sheeana spoke as she was leaving. "Desert Watch will have to be moved before long."

  "We are prepared."

  The sun was dipping below the horizon when Sheeana emerged from the arched street at the edge of the community. She strode into starlit desert, exploring with her senses as she had done as a child. Ahhh, there was the cinnamon essence. Worms near.

  She paused and, turning northeast away from the last sunglow, placed her palms flat above and below her eyes in the old Fremen way, confining view and light. She stared out of a horizontal frame. Whatever fell from heaven must pass this narrow slit.

  Tonight? They will come just after dark to delay the moment of explanation. A full night for reflection.

  She waited with Bene Gesserit patience.

  An arc of fire drew a thin line above the northern horizon. Another. Another. They were positioned right for the Landing Flat.

  Sheeana felt her heart beating fast.

  They have come!

  And what would be their message for the Sisterhood? Returning warriors triumphant or refugees? There could be little difference, given the evolution of Odrade's plan.

  She would know by morning.

  Sheeana lowered her hands and found she was trembling. Deep breath. The Litany.

  Presently, she walked the desert, sandwalking in the remembered stride of Dune. She had almost forgotten how the feet dragged. As though they carried extra weight. Seldom-used muscles were called into play but the random walk, once learned, was never forgotten.

  Once, I never dreamed I would ever again walk this way.

  If watchdogs detected that thought they might wonder about their Sheeana.

  It was a failure in herself, she thought. She had grown into the rhythms of Chapterhouse. This planet talked to her at a subterranean level. She felt earth, trees, and flowers, every growing thing as though all were part of her. And now, here was disturbing movement, something in a language from a different planet. She sensed the desert changing and that, too, was an alien tongue. Desert. Not lifeless but living in a way profoundly different from once-verdant Chapterhouse.

  Less life but more intense.

  She heard the desert: small slitherings, creaking chirps of insects, a dark rustle of hunting wings overhead and the quickest of ploppings on the sand - kangaroo mice brought here in anticipation of this day when worms would once more begin their rule.

  Walli will remember to send flora and fauna from Dune.

  She stopped atop a tall barracan. In front of her, darkness blurring its edges, was an ocean caught in stop motion, a shadow surf beating on a shadow beach of this changing land. It was a limitless desert-sea. It had originated far away and it would go to stranger places than this.

  I will take you there if I am able.

  A night breeze from drylands to moister places behind her deposited a film of dust on her cheeks and nose, lifting the edges of her hair as it passed. She felt saddened.

>   What might have been.

  That no longer was important.

  The things that are - they matter.

  She took a deep breath. Cinnamon stronger. Melange. Spice and worms near. Worms aware of her presence. How soon would this air be dry enough for the sandworms to grow great and work their crop as they had on Dune?

  The planet and the desert.

  She saw them as two halves of the same saga. Just as the Bene Gesserit and the humankind they served. Matched halves. Either without the other was diminished, an emptiness with lost purpose. Not better dead, perhaps, but moving aimlessly. There lay the threat of Honored Matre victory. Aimed by blind violence!

  Blind in a hostile universe.

  And there was why the Tyrant had preserved the Sisterhood.

  He knew he only gave us the path without direction. A paper chase laid down by a jokester and left empty at the end.

  A poet in his own right, though.

  She recalled his "Memory Poem" from Dar-es-Balat, a bit of jetsam the Bene Gesserit preserved.

  And for what reason do we preserve it? So I can fill my mind with it now? Forgetting for the moment what I may confront tomorrow?

  The fair night of the poet,

  Fill it with innocent stars.

  A pace apart Orion stands.

  His glare sees everything,

  Marking our genes forever.

  Welcome darkness and stare,

  Blinded in the afterglow.

  There's barren eternity!

  Sheeana felt abruptly that she had won a chance to become the ultimate artist, filled to overflowing and presented with a blank surface where she might create as she wished.

  An unrestricted universe!

  Odrade's words from those first childhood exposures to Bene Gesserit purpose came back to her. "Why did we fasten onto you, Sheeana? It's really simple. We recognized in you a thing we had long awaited. You arrived and we saw it happen."