Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  He has made that judgment on insufficient data, Teg thought.

  Duncan dropped the towel and looked at it for a moment. "Let me be the judge of what you can teach me, Bashar." He turned and stared narrowly at Teg seated in the cage.

  Teg inhaled deeply. He smelled the faint ozone from all of this durable Harkonnen equipment ticking away in readiness for Duncan's return to action. The ghola's perspiration carried a bitter dominant.

  Duncan sneezed.

  Teg sniffed, recognizing the omnipresent dust of their activities. It could be more tasted than smelled at times. Alkaline. Over it all was the fragrance of the air scrubbers and oxy regenerators. There was a distinct floral aroma built into the system but Teg could not identify the flower. In the month of their occupation, the globe also had taken on human odors, slowly insinuated into the original composite -- perspiration, cooking smells, the never-quite-suppressed acridity of waste reclamation. To Teg, these reminders of their presence were oddly offensive. And he found himself sniffing and listening for sounds of intrusion -- something more than the echoing passage of their own footsteps and the subdued metallic clashings from the kitchen area.

  Duncan's voice intruded: "You're an odd man, Bashar."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's your resemblance to the Duke Leto. The facial identity is weird. He was a bit shorter than you but the identity . . ." He shook his head, thinking of the Bene Gesserit designs behind those genetic markers in Teg's face -- that hawk look, the crease lines and that inner thing, that certainty of moral superiority.

  How moral and how superior?

  According to the records he had seen at the Keep (and Duncan was sure they had been placed there especially for him to discover) Teg's reputation was an almost universal thing throughout human society of this age. At the Battle of Markon, it had been enough for the enemy to know that Teg was there opposite them in person. They sued for terms. Was that true?

  Duncan looked at Teg in the console cage and put this question to him.

  "Reputation can be a beautiful weapon," Teg said. "It often spills less blood."

  "At Arbelough, why did you go to the front with your troops?" Duncan asked.

  Teg showed surprise. "Where did you learn that?"

  "At the Keep. You might have been killed. What would that have served?"

  Teg reminded himself that this young flesh standing over him held unknown knowledge, which must guide Duncan's quest for information. It was in that unknown area, Teg suspected, that Duncan was most valuable to the Sisterhood.

  "We took severe losses at Arbelough on the preceding two days," Teg said. "I failed to make a correct assessment of the enemy's fear and fanaticism."

  "But the risk of . . ."

  "My presence at the front said to my own people: 'I share your risks.' "

  "The Keep's records said Arbelough had been perverted by Face Dancers. Patrin told me you vetoed your aides when they urged you to sweep the planet clean, sterilize it and --"

  "You were not there, Duncan."

  "I am trying to be. So you spared your enemy against all advice."

  "Except for the Face Dancers."

  "But then you walked unarmed through the enemy ranks and before they had laid down their weapons."

  "To assure them they would not be mistreated."

  "That was very dangerous."

  "Was it? Many of them came over to us for the final assault on Kroinin where we broke the anti-Sisterhood forces."

  Duncan stared hard at Teg. Not only did this old Bashar resemble Duke Leto in appearance, but he also had that same Atreides charisma: a legendary figure even among his former enemies. Teg had said he was descended from Ghanima of the Atreides, but there had to be more in it than that. The ways of the Bene Gesserit breeding mastery awed him.

  "We will go back to the practice now," Duncan said.

  "Don't damage yourself."

  "You forget, Bashar. I remember a body as young as this one and right here on Giedi Prime."

  "Gammu!"

  "It was properly renamed but my body still recalls the original. That is why they sent me here. I know it."

  Of course he would know it, Teg thought.

  Restored by the brief respite, Teg introduced a new element in the attack and sent a sudden burn-line against Duncan's left side.

  How easily Duncan parried the attack!

  He was using an oddly mixed variation on the five attitudes, each response seemingly invented before it was required.

  "Each attack is a feather floating on the infinite road," Duncan said. His voice gave no hint of exertion. "As the feather approaches, it is diverted and removed."

  As he spoke, he parried the shifting attack and countered.

  Teg's Mentat logic followed the movements into what he recognized as dangerous places. Dependencies and key logs!

  Duncan shifted over to attack, moving ahead of it, pacing his movements rather than responding. Teg was forced to his utmost abilities as the shadow forces burned and flickered across the floor. Duncan's weaving figure in its mobile cage danced along the space between them. Not one of Teg's hunter-seekers or burn-line counters touched the moving figure. Duncan was over them, under them, seeming totally unafraid of the real pain that this equipment could bring him.

  Once more, Duncan increased the speed of his attack.

  A bolt of pain shot up Teg's left arm from his hand on the controls to his shoulder.

  With a sharp exclamation, Duncan shut down the equipment. "Sorry, Bashar. That was superb defense on your part but I'm afraid age defeated you."

  Once more, Duncan crossed the floor and stood over Teg.

  "A little pain to remind me of the pain I caused you," Teg said. He rubbed his tingling arm.

  "Blame the heat of the moment," Duncan said. "We have done enough for now."

  "Not quite," Teg said. "It is not enough to strengthen only your muscles."

  At Teg's words Duncan felt an alerting sensation throughout his body. He sensed the disorganized touch of that uncompleted thing that the reawakening had failed to arouse. Something crouched within him, Duncan thought. It was like a coiled spring waiting for release.

  "What more would you do?" Duncan asked. His voice sounded hoarse.

  "Your survival is in the balance here," Teg said. "All of this is being done to save you and get you to Rakis."

  "For Bene Gesserit reasons, which you say you do not know!"

  "I don't know them, Duncan."

  "But you're a Mentat."

  "Mentats require data to make projections."

  "Do you think Lucilla knows?"

  "I'm not sure but let me warn you again about her. She has orders to get you to Rakis prepared for what you must do there."

  "Must?" Duncan shook his head from side to side. "Am I not my own person with rights to make my own choices? What do you think you've reawakened here, a damned Face Dancer capable only of obeying orders?"

  "Are you telling me you will not go to Rakis?"

  "I'm telling you I will make my own decisions when I know what it is I'm to do. I'm not a hired assassin."

  "You think I am, Duncan?"

  "I think you're an honorable man, someone to be admired. Give me credit for having my own standards of duty and honor."

  "You've been given another chance at life and --"

  "But you are not my father and Lucilla is not my mother. Imprinter? For what does she hope to prepare me?"

  "It may be that she does not know, Duncan. Like me, she may have only part of the design. Knowing how the Sisterhood works, that is highly likely."

  "So the two of you just train me and deliver me to Arrakis. Here's the package you ordered!"

  "This is a far different universe than the one where you were originally born," Teg said. "As it was in your day, we still have a Great Convention against atomics and the pseudoatomics of lasgun-shield interaction. We still say that sneak attacks are forbidden. There are pieces of paper scattered around to which we
have put our names and we --"

  "But the no-ships have changed the basis for all of those treaties," Duncan said. "I think I learned my history fairly well at the Keep. Tell me, Bashar, why did Paul's son have the Tleilaxu provide him with my ghola-self, hundreds of me! for all those thousands of years?"

  "Paul's son?"

  "The Keep's records call him the God Emperor. You name him Tyrant."

  "Oh. I don't think we know why he did it. Perhaps he was lonely for someone from --"

  "You brought me back to confront the worm!" Duncan said.

  Is that what we're doing? Teg wondered. He had considered this possibility more than once, but it was only a possibility, not a projection. Even so, there had to be something more in Taraza's design. Teg sensed this with every fiber of his Mentat training. Did Lucilla know? Teg did not delude himself that he could pry revelation from a full Reverend Mother. No . . . he would have to bide his time, wait and watch and listen. In his own way, this obviously was what Duncan had decided. It was a dangerous course if he thwarted Lucilla!

  Teg shook his head. "Truly, Duncan, I do not know."

  "But you follow orders."

  "By my oath to the Sisterhood."

  "Deceptions, dishonesties -- those are empty words when the question is the Sisterhood's survival," Duncan quoted him.

  "Yes, I said that," Teg agreed.

  "I trust you now because you said it," Duncan said. "But I do not trust Lucilla."

  Teg dropped his chin to his breast. Dangerous . . . dangerous . . .

  Much more slowly than once he had done, Teg brought his attention out of such thoughts and went through the mental cleansing process, concentrating on the necessities laid upon him by Taraza.

  "You are my Bashar."

  Duncan studied the Bashar for a moment. Fatigue lines were obvious on the old man's face. Duncan was reminded suddenly of Teg's great age, wondering if it ever tempted men such as Teg to seek out the Tleilaxu and become gholas. Probably not. They knew they might become Tleilaxu puppets.

  This thought flooded Duncan's awareness, holding him immobile so plainly that Teg, lifting his gaze, saw it at once.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "The Tleilaxu have done something to me, something that has not yet been exposed," Duncan husked.

  "Exactly what we feared!" It was Lucilla speaking from the doorway behind Teg. She advanced to within two paces of Duncan. "I have been listening. You two are very informative."

  Teg spoke quickly, hoping to blunt the anger he sensed in her. "He has mastered the seven attitudes today."

  "He strikes like fire," Lucilla said, "but remember that we of the Sisterhood flow like water and fill in every place." She glanced down at Teg. "Do you not see that our ghola has gone beyond the attitudes?"

  "No fixed position, no attitude," Duncan said.

  Teg looked up sharply at Duncan, who stood with his head erect, his forehead smooth, his eyes clear as he returned Teg's gaze. Duncan had grown surprisingly in the short time since being awakened to his original memories.

  "Damn you, Miles!" Lucilla muttered.

  But Teg kept his attention on Duncan. The youth's entire body seemed wired to a new kind of vigor. There was a poise about him that had not been there before.

  Duncan shifted his attention to Lucilla. "You think you will fail in your assignment?"

  "Surely not," she said. "You're still a male."

  And she thought: Yes, that young body must flow hot with the juices of procreation. Indeed, the hormonal igniters are all intact and susceptible to arousing. His present stance, though, and the way he looked at her, forced her to raise her awareness to new, energy-demanding levels.

  "What have the Tleilaxu done to you?" she demanded.

  Duncan spoke with a flippancy that he did not feel: "O Great Imprinter, if I knew I would tell you."

  "You think it's a game we play?" she demanded.

  "I do not know what it is we play at!"

  "By now, many people know we are not on Rakis where we would have been expected to flee," she said.

  "And Gammu swarms with people returned from the Scattering," Teg said. "They have the numbers to explore many possibilities here."

  "Who would suspect the existence of a lost no-globe from the Harkonnen days?" Duncan asked.

  "Anyone who made the association between Rakis and Dar-es-Balat," Teg said.

  "If you think this is a game, consider the urgencies of the play," Lucilla said. She pivoted on one foot to concentrate on Teg. "And you have disobeyed Taraza!"

  "You are wrong! I have done exactly what she ordered me to do. I am her Bashar and you forget how well she knows me."

  With an abruptness that shocked her to silence, the subtleties of Taraza's maneuverings impressed themselves upon Lucilla . . .

  We are pawns!

  What a delicate touch Taraza always demonstrated in the way she moved her pawns about. Lucilla did not feel diminished by the realization that she was a pawn. That was knowledge bred and trained into every Reverend Mother of the Sisterhood. Even Teg knew it. Not diminished, no. The thing around them had escalated in Lucilla's awareness. She felt awed by Teg's words. How shallow had been her previous view of the forces within which they were enmeshed. It was as though she had seen only the surface of a turbulent river and, from that, had glimpsed the currents beneath. Now, however, she felt the flow all around her and a dismaying realization.

  Pawns are expendable.

  By your belief in singularities, in granular absolutes, you deny movement, even the movement of evolution! While you cause a granular universe to persist in your awareness, you are blind to movement. When things change, your absolute universe vanishes, no longer accessible to your self-limiting perceptions. The universe has moved beyond you.

  -First Draft, Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives

  Taraza put her hands beside her temples, palms flat in front of her ears, and pressed inward. Even her fingers could feel the tiredness in there: right between the hands -- fatigue. A brief flicker of eyelids and she fell into the relaxation trance. Hands against head were the sole focal points of fleshly awareness.

  One hundred heartbeats.

  She had practiced this regularly since learning it as a child, one of her first Bene Gesserit skills. Exactly one hundred heartbeats. After all of those years of practice, her body could pace them automatically by an unconscious metronome.

  When she opened her eyes at the count of one hundred, her head felt better. She hoped she would have at least two more hours in which to work before fatigue overcame her once more. Those one hundred heartbeats had given her extra years of wakefulness in her lifetime.

  Tonight, though, thinking of that old trick sent her memories spiraling backward. She found herself caught in her own childhood, the dormitory with the Sister Proctor pacing the aisle at night to make sure they all remained properly asleep in their beds.

  Sister Baram, the Night Proctor.

  Taraza had not thought of that name in years. Sister Baram had been short and fat, a failed Reverend Mother. Not for any immediately visible reason, but the Medical Sisters and their Suk doctors had found something. Baram had never been permitted to try the spice agony. She had been quite forthcoming about what she knew of her defect. It had been discovered while she was still in her teens: periodic nerve tremors, which manifested when she began to sink into sleep. A symptom of something deeper that had caused her to be sterilized. The tremors made Baram wakeful in the night. Aisle patrol was a logical assignment.

  Baram had other weaknesses not detected by her superiors. A wakeful child toddling to the washroom could lure Baram into low-voiced conversation. Naive questions elicited mostly naive answers, but sometimes Baram imparted useful knowledge. She had taught Taraza the relaxation trick.

  One of the older girls had found Sister Baram dead in the washroom one morning. The Night Proctor's tremors had been the symptom of a fatal defect, a fact important mostly to the Breeding Mistresses and thei
r endless records.

  Because the Bene Gesserit did not usually schedule the full "solo death education" until well into the acolyte stage, Sister Baram was the first dead person Taraza had seen. Sister Baram's body had been found partly beneath a washbasin, the right cheek pressed to the tile floor, her left hand caught in the plumbing under a sink. She had tried to pull her failing body upright and death had caught her in the attempt, exposing that last motion like an insect caught in amber.