Heretics of Dune dc-5

by Frank Herbert

  Once more, Odrade swept her gaze around the room.

  "Why are you studying this room?" Sheeana asked.

  "Hush, child!"

  The room was an irregular polyhedron with the smaller side to the left. About thirty-five meters long, half that at the widest. Many low divans and chairs in various degrees of comfort. Sheeana sat in queenly splendor on a bright yellow chair with wide soft arms. Not a chairdog in the place. Much brown and blue and yellow fabric. Odrade stared at the white lattice of a ventilator above a painting of mountains on the wider end wall. A cool breeze came through the ventilators below the windows and wafted toward the ventilator above the painting.

  "This was Hedley's room," Sheeana said.

  "Why do you annoy him by using his first name, child?"

  "Does that annoy him?"

  "Don't play word games with me, child! You know it annoys him and that's why you do it."

  "Then why did you ask?"

  Odrade ignored this while continuing her careful study of the room. The wall opposite the painting stood at an oblique angle to the outer wall. She had it now. Clever! This room had been constructed so that even a whisper here could be heard by someone beyond the high ventilator. No doubt the painting concealed another airway to carry sounds from this room. No snooper, sniffer, or other instrument would detect such an arrangement. Nothing would "beep" at a spying eye or ear. Only the wary senses of someone trained in deception had winkled it out.

  A hand signal summoned a waiting acolyte. Odrade's fingers flickered in silent communication: "Find out who is listening beyond that ventilator." She nodded toward the ventilator above the painting. "Let them continue. We must know to whom they report."

  "How did you know to come and save me?" Sheeana asked. The child had a lovely voice but it needed training, Odrade thought. There was a steadiness to it, though, that could be shaped into a powerful instrument.

  "Answer me!" Sheeana ordered.

  The imperious tone startled Odrade, arousing quick anger, which she was forced to suppress. Corrections would have to be made immediately!

  "Calm yourself, child," Odrade said. She pitched the command in a precise tenor and saw it take effect.

  Again, Sheeana startled her: "That's another kind of Voice. You're trying to calm me. Kipuna told me all about Voice."

  Odrade turned squarely facing Sheeana and looked down at her. Sheeana's first grief had passed but there was still anger when she spoke of Kipuna.

  "I am busy shaping our response to that attack," Odrade said. "Why do you distract me? I should think you would want them punished."

  "What will you do to them? Tell me! What will you do?"

  A surprisingly vindictive child, Odrade thought. That would have to be curbed. Hatred was as dangerous an emotion as love. The capacity for hatred was the capacity for its opposite.

  Odrade said: "I have sent Guild, Ix, and Tleilaxu the message we always dispatch when we have been annoyed. Three words: 'You will pay.' "

  "How will they pay?"

  "A proper Bene Gesserit punishment is being fashioned. They will feel the consequences of their behavior."

  "But what will you do?"

  "In time, you may learn. You may even learn how we design our punishment. For now, there is no need that you know."

  A sullen look came over Sheeana's face. She said: "You're not even angry. Annoyed. That's what you said."

  "Curb your impatience, child! There are things you do not understand."

  The Reverend Mother from the communications room returned, glanced once at Sheeana and spoke to Odrade. "Chapter House acknowledges receipt of your report. They approve your response."

  When the Reverend Mother from communications remained standing there, Odrade said: "There is more?"

  A flickering glance to Sheeana spoke of the woman's reservations. Odrade held up her right palm, the signal for silent communication.

  The Reverend Mother responded, her fingers dancing with unleashed excitement: "Taraza's message - The Tleilaxu are the pivotal element. Guild must be made to pay dearly for its melange. Shut down Rakian supply to them. Throw Guild and Ix together. They will overextend selves in face of crushing competition from the Scattering. Ignore Fish Speakers for now. They fall with Ix. Master of Masters responds to us from Tleilaxu. He goes to Rakis. Trap him."

  Odrade smiled softly to acknowledge that she understood. She watched the other woman leave the room. Not only did Chapter House agree with actions taken on Rakis, a suitable Bene Gesserit punishment had been fashioned with fascinating speed. Obviously Taraza and her advisors had anticipated this moment.

  Odrade allowed herself a sigh of relief. The message to Chapter House had been terse: an outline account of the attack, the list of the Sisterhood's casualties, identification of the attackers and a confirming note to Taraza that Odrade already had transmitted the required warning to the guilty: "You will pay."

  Yes, those fool attackers now knew the hornet's nest had been aroused. That would create fear - an essential part of the punishment.

  Sheeana squirmed in her chair. Her attitude said she would now try a new approach. "One of your people said there were Face Dancers." She gestured with her chin toward the roof.

  What a vast reservoir of ignorance this child was, Odrade thought. That emptiness would have to be filled. Face Dancers! Odrade thought about the bodies they had examined. The Tleilaxu had finally sent their Face Dancers into action. It was a test of the Bene Gesserit, of course. These new ones were extremely difficult to detect. They still gave off the characteristic smell of their unique pheromones, though. Odrade had sent that datum in her message to Chapter House.

  The problem now was to keep the Bene Gesserit knowledge secret. Odrade summoned an acolyte messenger. Indicating the ventilator with a flick of her eyes, Odrade spoke silently with her fingers: "Kill those who listen!"

  "You are too interested in Voice, child," Odrade said, speaking down to Sheeana in the chair. "Silence is a most valuable tool for learning."

  "But could I learn Voice? I want to learn it."

  "I am telling you to be silent and to learn by your silence."

  "I command you to teach me Voice!"

  Odrade reflected on Kipuna's reports. Sheeana had established effective Voice control over most of those around her. The child had learned it on her own. An intermediate level Voice for a limited audience. She was a natural. Tuek and Cania and the others were frightened by Sheeana. Religious fantasies contributed to that fear, of course, but Sheeana's mastery of Voice pitch and tone displayed an admirable unconscious selectivity.

  The indicated response to Sheeana was obvious, Odrade knew. Honesty. It was a most powerful lure and it served more than one purpose.

  "I am here to teach you many things," Odrade said, "but I do not do this at your command."

  "Everyone obeys me!" Sheeana said.

  She's barely into puberty and already at Aristocrat level, Odrade thought. Gods of our own making! What can she become?

  Sheeana slipped out of her chair and stood looking up at Odrade with a questioning expression. The child's eyes were on a level with Odrade's shoulders. Sheeana was going to be tall, a commanding presence. If she survived.

  "You answer some of my questions but you won't answer others," Sheeana said. "You said you'd been waiting for me but you won't explain. Why won't you obey me?"

  "A foolish question, child."

  "Why do you keep calling me child?"

  "Are you not a child?"

  "I menstruate."

  "But you're still a child."

  "The priests obey me."

  "They're afraid of you."

  "You aren't?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "Good! It gets tiresome when people only fear you."

  "The priests think you come from God."

  "Don't you think that?"

  "Why should I? We -" Odrade broke off as an acolyte messenger entered. The acolyte's fingers danced in silent communication: "Four p
riests listened. They have been killed. All were minions of Tuek."

  Odrade waved the messenger away.

  "She talks with her fingers," Sheeana said. "How does she do that?"

  "You ask too many of the wrong questions, child. And you haven't told me why I should consider you an instrument of God."

  "Shaitan spares me. I walk on the desert and when Shaitan comes, I talk to him."

  "Why do you call him Shaitan instead of Shai-hulud?"

  "Everybody asks that same stupid question!"

  "Then give me your stupid answer."

  The sullen expression returned to Sheeana's face. "It's because of how we met."

  "And how did you meet?"

  Sheeana tipped her head to one side and looked up at Odrade for a moment, then: "That's a secret."

  "And you know how to keep secrets?"

  Sheeana straightened and nodded but Odrade saw uncertainty in the movement. The child knew when she was being led into an impossible position!

  "Excellent!" Odrade said. "The keeping of secrets is one of a Reverend Mother's most essential teachings. I'm glad we won't have to bother with that one."

  "But I want to learn everything!"

  Such petulance in her voice. Very poor emotional control.

  "You must teach me everything!" Sheeana insisted.

  Time for the whip, Odrade thought. Sheeana had spoken and postured sufficiently that even a fifth-grade acolyte could feel confident of controlling her now.

  Using the full power of Voice, Odrade said: "Don't take that tone with me, child! Not if you wish to learn anything!"

  Sheeana went rigid. She was more than a minute absorbing what had happened to her and then relaxing. Presently, she smiled, a warm and open expression. "Oh, I'm so glad you came! It's been so boring lately."

  ***

  Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind.

  - Leto II: Dar-es-Balat Records

  The Gammu night, often quickly foreboding in this latitude, was almost two hours away. Gathering clouds shadowed the Keep. At Lucilla's command, Duncan had returned to the courtyard for an intense session of self-directed practice.

  Lucilla observed from the parapet where she had first watched him.

  Duncan moved in the tumbling twists of the Bene Gesserit eightfold combat, hurling his body across the grass, rolling, flipping himself from side to side, darting up and then down.

  It was a fine display of random dodging, Lucilla thought. She could see no predictable pattern in his movements and the speed was dazzling. He was almost sixteen SY and already coming onto the platform potential of his prana-bindu endowment.

  The carefully controlled movements of his training exercises revealed so much! He had responded quickly when she first ordered these evening sessions. The initial step of her instructions from Taraza had been accomplished. The ghola loved her. No doubt of it. She was mother-fixed to him. And it had been accomplished without seriously weakening him, although Teg's anxieties had been aroused.

  My shadow is on this ghola but he is not a supplicant nor a dependent follower, she reassured herself. Teg worries about it for no reason.

  Just that morning, she had told Teg, "Wherever his strengths dictate, he continues to express himself freely."

  Teg should see him right now, she thought. These new practice movements were largely Duncan's own creation.

  Lucilla suppressed a gasp of appreciation at a particularly nimble leap, which took Duncan almost to the center of the courtyard. The ghola was developing a nerve-muscle equilibrium that, given time, might be matched to a psychological equilibrium at least equal to Teg's. The cultural impact of such an achievement would be awesome. Look at all those who gave instinctive allegiance to Teg and, through Teg, to the Sisterhood.

  We have the Tyrant to thank for much of that, she thought.

  Before Leto II, no widespread system of cultural adjustments had ever endured long enough to approach the balance that the Bene Gesserit held as an ideal. It was this equilibrium - "flowing along the blade of a sword" - that fascinated Lucilla. It was why she lent herself so unreservedly to a project whose total design she did not know, but which demanded of her a performance that instinct labeled repugnant.

  Duncan is so young!

  What the Sisterhood required of her next had been spelled out explicitly by Taraza: the Sexual Imprint. Only that morning, Lucilla had posed naked before her mirror, forming the attitudes and motions of face and body that she knew she would use to obey Taraza's orders. In artificial repose, Lucilla had seen her own face appear like that of a prehistoric love goddess - opulent with flesh and the promise of softness into which an aroused male might hurl himself.

  In her education, Lucilla had seen ancient statues from the First Times, little stone figures of human females with wide hips and sagging breasts that assured abundance for a suckling infant. At will, Lucilla could produce a youthful simulation of that ancient form.

  In the courtyard below Lucilla, Duncan paused a moment and appeared to be thinking out his next movements. Presently, he nodded to himself, leaped high and twisted in the air, landing like a springbok on one leg, which kicked him sideways into gyrations more akin to dance than to combat.

  Lucilla drew her mouth into a tight line of resolution.

  Sexual Imprint.

  The secret of sex was no secret at all, she thought. The roots were attached to life itself. This explained, of course, why her first command-seduction for the Sisterhood had planted a male face in her memory. The Breeding Mistress had told her to expect this and not be alarmed by it. But Lucilla had realized then that the Sexual Imprint was a two-edged sword. You might learn to flow along the edge of the blade but you could be cut by it. Sometimes, when that male face of her first command-seduction returned unbidden into her mind, Lucilla felt confounded by it. The memory came so frequently at the peak of an intimate moment, forcing her to great efforts of concealment.

  "You are strengthened thus," the Breeding Mistresses reassured her.

  Still, there were times when she felt that she had trivialized something better left a mystery.

  A feeling of sourness at what she must do swept over Lucilla. These evenings when she observed Duncan's training sessions had been her favorite times each day. The lad's muscular development showed such definite progress - moving in the growth of sensitive muscle and nerve links - all of the prana-bindu marvels for which the Sisterhood was so famous. The next step was almost upon her, though, and she no longer could sink into watchful appreciation of her charge.

  Miles Teg would come out presently, she knew. Duncan's training would move again into the practice room with its more deadly weapons.

  Teg.

  Once more, Lucilla wondered about him. She had felt herself more than once attracted to him in a particular way that she recognized immediately. An Imprinter enjoyed some latitude in selecting her own breeding partners, provided she had no prior commitments nor contrary orders. Teg was old but his records suggested he might still be virile. She would not be able to keep the child, of course, but she had learned to deal with that.

  Why not? she had asked herself.

  Her plan had been simple in the extreme. Complete the Imprint on the ghola and then, registering her intent with Taraza, conceive a child by the redoubtable Miles Teg. Practical introductory seduction had been indicated, but Teg had not succumbed. His Mentat cynicism stopped her one afternoon in the dressing chamber off the Weapons Room.

  "My breeding days are over, Lucilla. The Sisterhood should be satisfied with what I already have given."

  Teg, clad only in black exercise leotards, finished wiping his sweaty face with a towel and dropped the towel into a hamper. He spoke without looking at her: "Would you please leave me now?"

  So he saw through her overtures!

  She should have anticipated that, Teg being who he was. Lucilla knew she might still seduce him. No Reverend Mother of her training should fail, not even with a Mentat of Teg's obvious powe
rs.

  Lucilla stood there a moment undecided, her mind automatically planning how to circumvent this preliminary rejection. Something stopped her. Not anger at the rejection, not the remote possibility that he might indeed be proof against her wiles. Pride and its possible fall (there was always that possibility) had little to do with it.

  Dignity.

  There was a quiet dignity in Teg and she had the certain knowledge of what his courage and prowess had already given to the Sisterhood. Not quite sure of her motives, Lucilla turned away from him. Possibly it was the underlying gratitude that the Sisterhood felt toward him. To seduce Teg now would be demeaning, not only of him but of herself. She could not bring herself to such an action, not without a direct order from a superior.

  As she stood on the parapet, some of these memories clouded her senses. There was movement in the shadows at the doorway from the Weapons Wing. Teg could be glimpsed there. Lucilla took a firmer grip on her responses and focused on Duncan. The ghola had stopped his controlled tumbling across the lawn. He stood quietly, breathing deeply, his attention aimed upward at Lucilla. She saw perspiration on his face and in dark blotchings on his light blue singlesuit.

  Leaning over the parapet, Lucilla called down to him: "That was very good, Duncan. Tomorrow, I will begin teaching you more of the foot-fist combinations."

  The words came out of her without censoring and she knew their source at once. They were for Teg standing in the shadowed doorway down there, not for the ghola. She was saying to Teg: "See! You aren't the only one who teaches him deadly abilities."

  Lucilla realized then that Teg had insinuated himself further into her psyche than she should permit. Grimly, she swung her gaze to the tall figure emerging from the doorway's shadows. Duncan already was running toward the Bashar.

  As Lucilla focused on Teg, reaction flashed through her ignited by the most elemental Bene Gesserit responses. The steps of this reaction could be defined later: Something wrong! Danger! Teg is not Teg! In the reactive flash, however, none of this took separate form. She responded, hurling all the volume of Voice she could muster: