Taraza lifted her gaze to Bellonda waiting in the doorway.
She is too fat! She flaunts that before us!
"We can no more eliminate Odrade than we can eliminate the ghola," Taraza said.
Bellonda's voice came low and level: "Both are now too dangerous to us. Look how Odrade weakens you with her account of those words at Sietch Tabr!"
"Has the Tyrant's message weakened me, Bell?"
"You know what I mean. The Bene Tleilax have no morals."
"Quit changing the subject, Bell. Your thoughts are darting around like an insect among the blossoms. What is it you really smell here?"
"The Tleilaxu! They made that ghola for their own purposes. And now Odrade wants us to -"
"You're repeating yourself, Bell."
"The Tleilaxu take shortcuts. Their view of genetics is not our view. It is not a human view. They make monsters."
"Is that what they do?"
Bellonda came into the room, walked around the table and stood close to Taraza, blocking the Mother Superior's view of the niche and its statuette of Chenoeh.
"Alliance with the priests of Rakis, yes, but not with the Tleilaxu." Bellonda's robes rustled as she gestured with a clenched fist.
"Bell! The High Priest is now a mimic Face Dancer. Ally with him, you mean?"
Bellonda shook her head angrily. "Believers in Shai-hulud are legion! You find them everywhere. What will be their reaction to us if our part in the deception is ever exposed?"
"No you don't, Bell! We have seen to it that only the Tleilaxu are vulnerable there. In that, Odrade's right."
"Wrong! If we ally with them we are both vulnerable. We will be forced to serve the Tleilaxu design. It will be worse than our long subservience to the Tyrant."
Taraza saw the vicious glinting of Bellonda's eyes. Her reaction was understandable. No Reverend Mother could contemplate the special bondage they had endured under the God Emperor without at least some chilling remembrances. Whipped along against their will, never sure of Bene Gesserit survival from one day to the next.
"You think we assure our spice supply by such a stupid alliance?" Bellonda demanded.
It was the same old argument, Taraza saw. Without melange and the agony of its transformation, there could be no Reverend Mothers. The whores from the Scattering surely had melange as one of their targets - the spice and the Bene Gesserit mastery of it.
Taraza returned to her table and sank into her chairdog, leaning back while it molded itself to her contours. It was a problem. A peculiar Bene Gesserit problem. Although they searched and experimented constantly, the Sisterhood had never found a substitute for the spice. The Spacing Guild might want melange to trance-form its navigators, but they could substitute Ixian machinery. Ix and its subsidiaries competed in the Guild's markets. They had alternatives.
We have none.
Bellonda crossed to the other side of Taraza's table, put both fists on the smooth surface and leaned forward to look down at the Mother Superior.
"And we still don't know what the Tleilaxu did to our ghola!"
"Odrade will find out."
"Not reason enough to forgive her treachery!"
Taraza spoke in a low voice: "We waited for this moment through generation after generation and you would abort the project just like that." She slapped a palm lightly against the table.
"The precious Rakian project is no longer our project," Bellonda said. "It may never have been."
All of her considerable mental powers in hard focus, Taraza reexamined the implications of this familiar argument. It was a thing spoken frequently in the wrangling session they had concluded earlier.
Was the ghola scheme something set in motion by the Tyrant? If so, what could they do about it now? What should they do about it?
During the long dispute, the Minority Report had been in all of their minds. Schwangyu might be dead but her faction survived and it looked now as though Bellonda had joined them. Was the Sisterhood blinding itself to a fatal possibility? Odrade's report of that hidden message on Rakis could be interpreted as an ominous warning. Odrade emphasized this by reporting how she had been alerted by her inner sense of alarm. No Reverend Mother could treat such an event lightly.
Bellonda straightened and folded her arms across her breast. "We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us, do we?"
That was an argument peculiar to Bene Gesserit disputes. It reminded them of their own particular susceptibility.
We are the secret aristocrats and it is our offspring who inherit the power. Yes, we are susceptible to that and Miles Teg is a superb example.
Bellonda found a straight chair and sat down, bringing her eyes level with Taraza's. "At the height of the Scattering," she said, "we lost some twenty percent of our failures."
"It is not failures who are coming back to us."
"But the Tyrant surely knew this would happen!"
"The Scattering was his goal, Bell. That was his Golden Path, humankind's survival!"
"But we know how he felt about the Tleilaxu and yet he did not exterminate them. He could have and he did not!"
"He wanted diversity."
Bellonda pounded a fist on the table. "He certainly got that!"
"We've been through all of these arguments over and over, Bell, and I still see no way to escape what Odrade has done."
"Subservience!"
"Not at all. Were we ever totally subservient to one of the pre-Tyrant emperors? Not even to Muad'dib!"
"We're still in the Tyrant's trap," Bellonda accused. "Tell me, why have the Tleilaxu continued to produce his favorite ghola? Millennia, and still that ghola keeps coming out of their tanks like a dancing doll."
"You think the Tleilaxu still follow a secret order from the Tyrant? If so, then you argue for Odrade. She has created admirable conditions for us to examine this."
"He ordered nothing of the kind! He merely made that particular ghola deliciously attractive to the Bene Tleilax."
"And not to us?"
"Mother Superior, we must get ourselves out of the Tyrant's trap now! And by the most direct method."
"The decision is mine, Bell. I still lean toward a cautious alliance."
"Then at the very least let us kill the ghola. Sheeana can have children. We could -"
"This is not now and never was purely a breeding project!"
"But it could be. What if you're wrong about the power behind the Atreides prescience?"
"All of your proposals lead to alienation from Rakis and from the Tleilaxu, Bell. "
"The Sisterhood could weather fifty generations on our present stockpiles of melange. More with rationing."
"You think fifty generations is a long time, Bell? Don't you see that this very attitude is why you are not sitting in my chair?"
Bellonda pushed herself back from the table, her chair scraping harshly against the floor. Taraza could see that she was not convinced. Bellonda no longer could be trusted. She might be the one who would have to die. And where was the noble purpose in that?
"This gets us nowhere," Taraza said. "Leave me."
When she was alone, Taraza once more considered Odrade's message. Ominous. It was easy to see why Bellonda and others reacted violently. But that showed a dangerous lack of control.
It is not yet time to write the Sisterhood's final will and testament.
In an odd way, Odrade and Bellonda shared the same fear but came to different decisions because of that fear. Odrade's interpretation of that message in the stones of Rakis conveyed an old warning:
This, too, shall pass away.
Are we to end now, crushed by ravenous hordes from the Scattering?
But the secret of the axlotl tanks was almost within the Sisterhood's grasp.
If we gain that, nothing can stop us!
Taraza swung her gaze around the details of her room. The Bene Gesserit power was still here. Chapter House remained concealed behind a moat of no-ships, i
ts location unrecorded except in the minds of her own people. Invisibility.
Temporary invisibility! Accidents occurred.
Taraza squared her shoulders. Take precautions but don't live in their shadows, constantly furtive. The Litany Against Fear served a useful purpose when avoiding shadows.
From anyone but Odrade, the warning message with its disturbing implications that the Tyrant still guided his Golden Path would have been far less fearsome.
That damnable Atreides talent!
"No more than a secret society?"
Taraza gritted her teeth in frustration.
"Memories are not enough unless they call you to noble purpose!"
And what if it was true that the Sisterhood no longer heard the music of life?
Damn him! The Tyrant could still touch them.
What is he trying to tell us? His Golden Path could not be in peril. The Scattering had seen to that. Humans had spread their kind outward on uncounted courses like the spines of a hedgehog.
Had he seen a vision of the Scattered Ones returning? Could he possibly have anticipated this bramble patch at the foot of his Golden Path?
He knew we would suspect his powers. He knew it!
Taraza thought about the mounting reports of the Lost Ones who were returning to their roots. A remarkable diversity of people and artifacts accompanied by a remarkable degree of secrecy and wide evidence of conspiracy. No-ships of a peculiar design, weapons and artifacts of breathtaking sophistication. Diverse peoples and diverse ways.
Some, astonishingly primitive. At least on the surface.
And they wanted much more than melange. Taraza recognized the peculiar form of mysticism that drove the Scattered Ones back: "We want your elder secrets!"
The message of the Honored Matres was clear enough, too: "We will take what we want."
Odrade has it all right in her hands, Taraza thought. She had Sheeana. Soon, if Burzmali succeeded, she would have the ghola. She had the Tleilaxu Master of Masters. She could have Rakis itself!
If only she were not an Atreides.
Taraza glanced at the projected words still dancing above her tabletop: a comparison of this newest Duncan Idaho with all of the slain ones. Each new ghola had been slightly different from its predecessors. That was clear enough. The Tleilaxu were perfecting something. But what? Was the clue hidden in these new Face Dancers? The Tleilaxu obviously sought an undetectable Face Dancer, mimics whose mimicry reached perfection, shape-copiers who copied not only the surface memories of their victims but the deepest thoughts and identity as well. It was a form of immortality even more enticing than the one the Tleilaxu Masters used at present. That obviously was why they followed this course.
Her own analysis agreed with the majority of her advisors: Such a mimic would become the copied person. Odrade's reports on the Face Dancer Tuek were highly suggestive. Even the Tleilaxu Masters might not be able to shake such a Face Dancer out of its mimic shape and behavior.
And its beliefs.
Damn Odrade! She had painted her Sisters into a corner. They had no choice except to follow Odrade's lead and Odrade knew it!
How did she know it? Was it that wild talent again?
I cannot act blindly. I must know.
Taraza went through the well-remembered regimen to restore a sense of calm. She dared not make momentous decisions in a frustrated mood. A long look at the statuette of Chenoeh helped. Lifting herself from the chairdog, Taraza returned to her favorite window.
It often soothed her to stare out at this landscape, observing how the distances changed with the daily movement of sunlight and shifts in the planet's well-managed weather.
Hunger prodded her.
I will eat with the acolytes and lay Sisters today.
It helped at times to gather the young around her and remember the persistence of the eating rituals, the daily timing - morning, noon, and evening. That formed a reliable cement. She enjoyed watching her people. They were like a tide speaking of deeper things, of unseen forces and greater powers that persisted because the Bene Gesserit had found the ways of flowing with that persistence.
These thoughts renewed Taraza's balance. Nagging questions could be placed temporarily at a distance. She could look at them without passion.
Odrade and the Tyrant were right: Without noble purpose we are nothing.
One could not escape, though, the fact that critical decisions were being made on Rakis by a person who suffered from those recurring Atreides flaws. Odrade had always displayed typical Atreides weakness. She had been positively benevolent to erring acolytes. Affections developed out of such behavior!
Dangerous and mind-clouding affections.
This weakened others, who then were required to compensate for such laxity. More competent Sisters were called upon to take erring acolytes in hand and correct the weaknesses. Of course, Odrade's behavior had exposed these flaws in acolytes. One must admit this. Perhaps Odrade reasoned thus.
When she thought this way, something subtle and powerful shifted in Taraza's perceptions. She was forced to put down a deep sense of loneliness. It rankled. Melancholy could be quite as mind-clouding as affection... or even love. Taraza and her watchful Memory Sisters ascribed such emotional responses to awareness of mortality. She was forced to confront the fact that one day she would be no more than a set of memories in someone else's living flesh.
Memories and accidental discoveries, she saw, had made her vulnerable. And just when she needed every available faculty!
But I am not yet dead.
Taraza knew how to restore herself. And she knew the consequences. Always after these bouts of melancholy she regained an even firmer grip on her life and its purposes. Odrade's flawed behavior was a source of her Mother Superior's strength.
Odrade knew it. Taraza smiled grimly at this awareness. The Mother Superior's authority over her Sisters always became stronger when she returned from melancholy. Others had observed this but only Odrade knew about the rage.
There!
Taraza realized that she had confronted the distressful seeds of her frustration.
Odrade had clearly recognized on several occasions what sat at the core of the Mother Superior's behavior. A giant howl of rage against the uses others had made of her life. The power of that suppressed rage was daunting even though it could never be expressed in a way that vented it. That rage must never be allowed to heal. How it hurt! Odrade's awareness made the pain even more intense.
Such things did what they were supposed to do, of course. Bene Gesserit impositions developed certain mental muscles. They built up layers of callousness that could never be revealed to outsiders. Love was one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. They had to protect themselves against it. A Reverend Mother could never become intimately personal, not even in the services of the Bene Gesserit.
Simulation: We play the necessary role that saves us. The Bene Gesserit will persist!
How long would they be subservient this time? Another thirty-five hundred years? Well, damn them all! It would still be only a temporary thing.
Taraza turned her back on the window and its restorative view. She did feel restored. New strength flowed into her. There was strength enough to overcome that gnawing reluctance which had kept her from making the essential decision.
I will go to Rakis.
She no longer could evade the source of her own reluctance.
I may have to do what Bellonda wants.
***
Survival of self, of species, and of environment, these are what drive humans. You can observe how the order of importance changes in a lifetime. What are the things of immediate concern at a given age? Weather? The state of the digestion? Does she (or he) really care? All of those various hungers that flesh can sense and hope to satisfy. What else could possibly matter?
- Leto II to Hwi Noree, His Voice: Dar-es-Balat
Miles Teg awoke in darkness to find himself being carried on a litter sling supported by suspenso
rs. By their faint energy glow, he could see the tiny suspensor bulbs in an updangling row around him.
There was a gag in his mouth. His hands were securely tied behind his back. His eyes remained uncovered.
So they don't care what I see.
Who they were he could not tell. The bobbing motions of the dark shapes around him suggested they were descending uneven terrain. A trail? The litter sling rode smoothly on its suspensors. He could sense the faint humming from the suspensors when his party stopped to negotiate the turn of a difficult passage.
Now and then through some intervening obstruction, he saw the flickering of a light ahead. They entered the lighted area presently and stopped. He saw a single glowglobe about three meters off the ground, tethered on a pole and moving gently in a cold breeze. By its yellow glow he discerned a shack in the center of a muddy clearing, many tracks in trampled snow. He saw bushes and a few sparse trees around the clearing. Someone passed a brighter handlight across his face. Nothing was said but Teg saw a hand gesture toward the shack. He had seldom seen such a dilapidated structure. It looked ready to collapse at the slightest touch. He bet himself that the roof leaked.
Once more, his party lurched into motion, swinging him toward the shack. He studied his escort in the dim light - faces muffled to the eyes in a cover that obscured mouths and chins. Hoods hid their hair. The clothing was bulky and concealed body details except for the general articulation of arms and legs.
The pole-tethered glowglobe went dark.
A door opened in the shack, sending a brilliant glare across the clearing. His escort hustled him inside and left him there. He heard the door close behind them.
It was almost blindingly bright inside after the darkness. Teg blinked until his eyes adapted to the change. With an odd sense of displacement, he looked around him. He had expected the shack's interior to match its exterior but here was a neat room almost bare of furnishings - only three chairs, a small table and... he drew in a sharp breath: an Ixian Probe! Couldn't they smell the shere on his breath?
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