Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  There were no windows in the building's face. Only the faint glitterings of surface 'eyes here and there in the dull sheen of ancient plasteel. They were old-fashioned comeyes, she noted, much bigger than modern ones.

  A door deep in the shadows swung inward on silent hinges.

  "This way." Burzmali reached back and urged her forward with a hand on her elbow.

  They entered a dimly lighted hallway that smelled of exotic foods and bitter essences. She was a moment identifying some of the things that assailed her nostrils. Melange. She caught the unmistakable cinnamon ripeness. And yes, semuta. She identified burned rice, higet salts. Someone was masking another kind of cooking. There were explosives being made here. She thought of warning Burzmali but reconsidered. It was not necessary for him to know and there might be ears in this confined space to hear whatever she said.

  Burzmali led the way up a shadowy flight of stairs with a dim glowstrip along the slanting baseboard. At the top he found a hidden switch concealed behind a patch in the patched and repatched wall. There was no sound when he pushed the switch but Lucilla felt a change in the movement all around them. Silence. It was a new kind of silence in her experience, a crouching preparation for flight or violence.

  It was cold in the stairwell and she shivered, but not from the chill. Footsteps sounded beyond the doorway beside the patch-masked switch.

  A gray-haired hag in a yellow smock opened the door and peered up at them past her straggling eyebrows.

  "It's you," she said, her voice wavering. She stood aside for them to enter.

  Lucilla glanced swiftly around the room as she heard the door close behind them. It was a room the unobservant might think shabby, but that was superficial. Underneath, it was quality. The shabbiness was another mask, partly a matter of this place having been fitted to a particularly demanding person: This goes here and nowhere else! That goes over there and it stays there! The furnishings and bric-a-brac looked a little worn but someone here did not object to that. The room felt better this way. It was that kind of room.

  Who possessed this room? The old woman? She was making her painful way toward a door on their left.

  "We are not to be disturbed until dawn," Burzmali said.

  The old woman stopped and turned.

  Lucilla studied her. Was this another who shammed advanced age? No. The age was real. Every motion was diffused by unsteadiness -- a trembling of the neck, a failure of the body that betrayed her in ways she could not prevent.

  "Even if it's somebody important?" the old woman asked in her wavering voice.

  The eyes twitched when she spoke. Her mouth moved only minimally to emit the necessary sounds, spacing out her words as though she drew them from somewhere deep within. Her shoulders, curved from years of bending at some fixed work, would not straighten enough for her to look Burzmali in the eyes. She peered upward past her brows instead, an oddly furtive posture.

  "What important person are you expecting?" Burzmali asked.

  The old woman shuddered and appeared to take a long time understanding.

  "Impor-r-rtant people come here," she said.

  Lucilla recognized the body signals and blurted it because Burzmali must know:

  "She's from Rakis!"

  The old woman's curious upward gaze locked on Lucilla. The ancient voice said: "I was a priestess, Hormu Lady."

  "Of course she's from Rakis," Burzmali said. His tone warned her not to question.

  "I would not harm you," the hag whined.

  "Do you still serve the Divided God?"

  Again, there was that long delay for the old woman to respond.

  "Many serve the Great Guldur," she said.

  Lucilla pursed her lips and once more scanned the room. The old woman had been reduced greatly in importance. "I am glad I do not have to kill you," Lucilla said.

  The old woman's jaw drooped open in a parody of surprise while spittle dripped from her lips.

  This was a descendant of Fremen? Lucilla let her revulsion come out in a long shudder. This mendicant bit of flotsam had been shaped from a people who walked tall and proud, a people who died bravely. This one would die whining.

  "Please trust me," the hag whined and fled the room.

  "Why did you do that?" Burzmali demanded. "These are the ones who will get us to Rakis!"

  She merely looked at him, recognizing the fear in his question. It was fear for her.

  But I did not imprint him back there, she thought.

  With a sense of shock she realized that Burzmali had recognized hate in her. I hate them! she thought. I hate the people of this planet!

  That was a dangerous emotion for a Reverend Mother. Still it burned in her. This planet had changed her in a way she did not want. She did not want the realization that such things could be. Intellectual understanding was one thing; experience was another.

  Damn them!

  But they already were damned.

  Her chest pained her. Frustration! There was no escaping this new awareness. What had happened to these people?

  People?

  The shells were here but they no longer could be called fully alive. Dangerous, though. Supremely dangerous.

  "We must rest while we can," Burzmali said.

  "I do not have to earn my money?" she demanded.

  Burzmali paled. "What we did was necessary! We were lucky and were not stopped but it could have happened!"

  "And this place is safe?"

  "As safe as I can make it. Everyone here has been screened by me or by my people."

  Lucilla found a long couch that smelled of old perfumes and composed herself there to scour her emotions of the dangerous hate. Where hate entered, love might follow! She heard Burzmali stretching out to rest on cushions against a nearby wall. Soon, he was breathing deeply, but sleep evaded Lucilla. She kept sensing crowds of memories, things thrust forward by the Others who shared her inner storerooms of thinking. Abruptly, inner vision gave her a glimpse of a street and faces, people moving in bright sunlight. It took a moment for her to realize that she saw all of this from a peculiar angle -- that she was being cradled in someone's arms. She knew then that this was one of her own personal memories. She could place the one who held her, feel the warm heartbeat next to a warm cheek.

  Lucilla tasted the salt of her own tears.

  She realized then that Gammu had touched her more deeply than any experience since her first days in the Bene Gesserit schools.

  Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.

  -Darwi Odrade, Argument in Council

  It was a group filled with fierce tensions: Taraza (wearing secret mail under her robe and mindful of the other precautions she had taken), Odrade (certain that there could be violence and consequently wary), Sheeana (thoroughly briefed on the probabilities here and shielded behind three Security Mothers who moved with her like fleshly armor), Waff (worried that his reason might have been clouded by some mysterious Bene Gesserit artifice), the false Tuek (giving every evidence that he was about to erupt in rage), and nine of Tuek's Rakian counselors (each angrily engaged in seeking ascendancy for self or family).

  In addition, five guardian acolytes, bred and trained by the Sisterhood for physical violence, stayed close to Taraza. Waff moved with an equal number of new Face Dancers.

  They had convened in the penthouse atop the Dar-es-Balat Museum. It was a long room with a wall of plaz facing west across a roof garden of lacy greenery. The interior was furnished with soft divans and was decorated with artful displays from the Tyrant's no-room.

  Odrade had argued against including Sheeana but Taraza remained adamant. The girl's effect on Waff and some of the priesthood represented an overwhelming advantage for the Bene Gesserit.

  There were dolban screens over the long wall of windows to keep out the worst glare of a westering sun. That the room faced west said something to Odrade. The windows looked into the land of gloaming where Shai-hulud took his repose. It was a room focused on the past
, on death.

  She admired the dolbans in front of her. They were flat black slats ten molecules wide and rotating in a transparent liquid medium. Set automatically, the best Ixian dolbans admitted a predetermined level of light without much diminishing the view. Artists and antique dealers preferred them to polarizing systems, Odrade knew, because they admitted a full spectrum of available light. Their installation spoke of the uses to which this room was put -- a display case for the best of the God Emperor's hoard. Yes -- there was a gown that had been worn by his intended bride.

  The priestly counselors were arguing fiercely among themselves at one end of the room, ignoring the false Tuek. Taraza stood nearby listening. Her expression said she thought the priests fools.

  Waff stood with his Face Dancer entourage near the wide entrance door. His attention shifted from Sheeana to Odrade to Taraza and only occasionally to the arguing priests. Every movement Waff made betrayed his uncertainties. Would the Bene Gesserit really support him? Could they together override Rakian opposition by peaceful means?

  Sheeana and her shielding escort came to stand beside Odrade. The girl still showed stringy muscles, Odrade observed, but she was filling out and the muscles had taken on a recognizable Bene Gesserit definition. The high planes of her cheekbones had grown softer under that olive skin, the brown eyes more liquid, but there were still red sunstreaks in her brown hair. The attention she spared for the arguing priests said she was assessing what had been revealed to her in the briefing.

  "Will they really fight?" she whispered.

  "Listen to them," Odrade said.

  "What will the Mother Superior do?"

  "Watch her carefully."

  Both of them looked at Taraza standing in her group of muscular acolytes. Taraza now looked amused as she continued to observe the priests.

  The Rakian group had started their argument out in the roof garden. They had brought it inside as the shadows lengthened. They breathed angrily, muttering sometimes and then raising their voices. Did they not see how the mimic Tuek watched them?

  Odrade returned her attention to the horizon visible beyond the roof garden: not another sign of life out there in the desert. Any direction you looked outward from Dar-es-Balat showed empty sand. People born and raised here had a different view of life and their planet than most of those priestly counselors. This was not the Rakis of green belts and watered oases, which abounded in the higher latitudes like flowered fingers pointing into the long desert tracks. Out from Dar-es-Balat was the meridian desert that stretched like a cummerbund around the entire planet.

  "I have heard enough of this nonsense!" the false Tuek exploded. He pushed one of the counselors roughly aside and strode into the middle of the arguing group, pivoting to stare into each face. "Are you all mad?"

  One of the priests (It was old Albertus, by the gods!) looked across the room at Waff and called out: "Ser Waff! Will you please control your Face Dancer?"

  Waff hesitated and then moved toward the disputants, his entourage close behind.

  The false Tuek whirled and pointed a finger at Waff: "You! Stay where you are! I will brook no Tleilaxu interference! Your conspiracy is quite clear to me!"

  Odrade had been watching Waff as the mimic Tuek spoke. Surprise! The Bene Tleilax Master had never before been addressed thus by one of his minions. What a shock! Rage convulsed his features. Humming sounds like the noises of angry insects came from his mouth, a modulated thing that clearly was some kind of language. The Face Dancers of his entourage froze but the false Tuek merely returned attention to his counselors.

  Waff stopped humming. Consternation! His Face Dancer Tuek would not come to heel! He lurched into motion toward the priests. The false Tuek saw it and once more leveled a hand at him, the finger quivering.

  "I told you to stay out of this! You might be able to do away with me but you'll not saddle me with your Tleilaxu filth!"

  That did it. Waff stopped. Realization came over him. He shot a glance at Taraza, seeing her amused recognition of his predicament. Now, he had a new target for his rage.

  "You knew!"

  "I suspected."

  "You . . . you . . ."

  "You fashioned too well," Taraza said. "It's your own doing."

  The priests were oblivious to this exchange. They shouted at the false Tuek, ordering him to shut up and remove himself, calling him a "damned Face Dancer!"

  Odrade studied the object of this attack with care. How deep did the print go? Had he really convinced himself that he was Tuek?

  In a sudden lull, the mimic drew himself up with dignity and sent a scornful glance at his accusers. "You all know me," he said. "You all know my years of service to the Divided God Who is One God. I will go to Him now if your conspiracy extends to that but remember this: He knows what is in your hearts!"

  The priests looked as one man to Waff. None of them had seen a Face Dancer replace their High Priest. There had been no body to see. Every bit of evidence was the evidence of human voices saying things that might be lies. Belatedly, several looked at Odrade. Her voice was one of those that had convinced them.

  Waff, too, was looking at Odrade.

  She smiled and addressed herself to the Tleilaxu Master. "It suits our purposes that the High Priesthood not pass into other hands at this time," she said.

  Waff immediately saw the advantage to himself. This was a wedge between priests and Bene Gesserit. This removed one of the most dangerous holds the Sisterhood had on the Tleilaxu.

  "It suits my purposes, too," he said.

  As the priests once more lifted their voices in anger, Taraza came in right on cue: "Which of you will break our accord?" she demanded.

  Tuek thrust two of his counselors aside and strode across the room to the Mother Superior. He stopped only a pace from her.

  "What game is this?" he asked.

  "We support you against those who would replace you," she said. "The Bene Tleilax join us in this. It is our way of demonstrating that we, too, have a vote in selecting the High Priest."

  Several priestly voices were raised in unison: "Is he or is he not a Face Dancer?"

  Taraza looked benignly at the man in front of her: "Are you a Face Dancer?"

  "Of course not!"

  Taraza looked at Odrade, who said: "There seems to have been a mistake."

  Odrade singled out Albertus among the priests and locked eyes with him. "Sheeana," Odrade said, "what should the Church of the Divided God do now?"

  As she had been briefed to do, Sheeana stepped out of her guardian enclosure and spoke with all of the hauteur she had been taught: "They shall continue to serve God!"

  "The business of this meeting appears to have been concluded," Taraza said. "If you need protection, High Priest Tuek, a squad of our guardians awaits in the hall. They are yours to command."

  They could see acceptance and understanding in him. He had become a creature of the Bene Gesserit. He remembered nothing of his Face Dancer origins.

  When the priests and Tuek had gone, Waff sent a single word at Taraza, speaking in the language of the Islamiyat: "Explain!"

  Taraza stepped away from her guards, appearing, to make herself vulnerable. It was a calculated move they had debated in front of Sheeana. In the same language, Taraza said: "We release our grip on the Bene Tleilax."

  They waited while he weighed her words. Taraza reminded herself that the Tleilaxu name for themselves could be translated as "the un-nameable." That was a label often reserved for gods.

  This god obviously had not extended the discovery in here to what might be happening with his mimics among Ixians and Fish Speakers. Waff had more shocks coming. He appeared quite puzzled, though.

  Waff confronted many unanswered questions. He was not satisfied with his reports from Gammu. It was a dangerous double game he played now. Did the Sisterhood play a similar game? But the Tleilaxu Lost Ones could not be shunted aside without inviting attack by the Honored Matres. Taraza herself had warned of this. Did the old Bashar
on Gammu still represent a force worthy of consideration?

  He voiced this question.

  Taraza countered with her own question: "How did you change our ghola? What did you hope to gain?" She felt certain she already knew. But the pose of ignorance was necessary.

  Waff wanted to say: "The death of all Bene Gesserit!" They were too dangerous. Yet their value was incalculable. He sank into a sulking silence, looking at the Reverend Mothers with a brooding expression that made his elfin features even more childlike.

  A petulant child, Taraza thought. She warned herself then that it was dangerous to underestimate Waff. You broke the Tleilaxu egg only to find another egg inside -- ad infinitum! Everything circled back to Odrade's suspicions about the contentions that might still lead them to bloody violence in this room. Had the Tleilaxu really revealed what they had learned from the whores and the other Lost Ones? Was the ghola only a potential Tleilaxu weapon?