Heretics of Dune dc-5

by Frank Herbert

  Waff ground his teeth. What was she doing? He entertained the mad thought that the Sisterhood had clogged his mind with some secret drug in the air. They knew things denied to others! He stared from Taraza to Odrade and back to Taraza. He knew he was old with serial ghola resurrections but not old in the way of the Bene Gesserit. These people were old! They seldom looked old but they were old, old beyond anything he dared imagine.

  Taraza was having similar thoughts. She had seen the flash of deeper awareness in Waff's eyes. Necessity opened new doors of reason. How deep did the Tleilaxu go? His eyes were so old! She had the feeling that whatever had been a brain in these Tleilaxu Masters was now something else - a holorecording from which all weakening emotions had been erased. She shared the distrust of emotions that she suspected in him. Was that a bond to unite them?

  The tropism of common thoughts.

  "You say you release your grip on us," Waff growled, "but I feel your fingers around my throat."

  "Then here is a grip on our throat," she said. "Some of your Lost Ones have returned to you. Never has a Reverend Mother come back to us from the Scattering."

  "But you said you knew all of the -"

  "We have other ways of gaining knowledge. What do you suppose happened to the Reverend Mothers we sent out into the Scattering?"

  "A common disaster?" He shook his head. This was absolutely new information. None of the returned Tleilaxu had said anything at all about this. The discrepancy fed his suspicions. Whom was he to believe?

  "They were subverted," Taraza said.

  Odrade, hearing the general suspicion voiced for the first time by the Mother Superior, sensed the enormous power implicit in Taraza's simple statement. Odrade was cowed by it. She knew the resources, the contingency plans, the improvised ways a Reverend Mother might use to surmount barriers. Something Out There could stop that?

  When Waff did not respond, Taraza said: "You come to us with dirty hands."

  "You dare say this?" Waff asked. "You who continue to deplete our resources in the ways taught you by the Bashar's mother?"

  "We knew you could afford the losses if you had resources from the Scattering," Taraza said.

  Waff inhaled a trembling breath. So the Bene Gesserit knew even this. He saw in part how they had learned it. Well, a way would have to be found to bring the false Tuek back under control. Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.

  Taraza moved even closer to Waff, alone and vulnerable. She saw her guards grow tense. Sheeana took a small step toward the Mother Superior and was pulled back by Odrade.

  Odrade kept her attention on the Mother Superior and not on potential attackers. Were the Tleilaxu truly convinced that the Bene Gesserit would serve them? Taraza had tested the limits of it, no doubt of that. And in the language of the Islamiyat. But she looked very alone out there away from her guards and so near Waff and his people. Where would Waff's obvious suspicions lead him now?

  Taraza shivered.

  Odrade saw it. Taraza had been abnormally thin as a child and had never put on an excess ounce of fat. This made her exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes, intolerant of cold, but Odrade sensed no such change in the room. Taraza had made a dangerous decision then, so dangerous that her body betrayed her. Not dangerous to herself, of course, but dangerous to the Sisterhood. There was the most awful Bene Gesserit crime: disloyalty to their own order.

  "We will serve you in all ways except one," Taraza said. "We will never become receptacles for gholas!"

  Waff paled.

  Taraza continued: "None of us is now nor will ever become..." she paused "... an axlotl tank."

  Waff raised his right hand in the start of a gesture every Reverend Mother knew: the signal for his Face Dancers to attack.

  Taraza pointed at his upraised hand. "If you complete that gesture, the Tleilaxu will lose everything. The messenger of God -" Taraza nodded over a shoulder toward Sheeana "- will turn her back upon you and the words of the Prophet will be dust in your mouths."

  In the language of the Islamiyat, such words were too much for Waff. He lowered his hand but he continued to glower at Taraza.

  "My ambassador said we would share everything we know," Taraza said. "You said you, too, would share. The messenger of God listens with the ears of the Prophet! What pours forth from the Abdl of the Tleilaxu?"

  Waff's shoulders sagged.

  Taraza turned her back on him. It was an artful move but both she and the other Reverend Mothers present knew she did it now in perfect safety. Looking across the room at Odrade, Taraza allowed herself a smile that she knew Odrade would interpret correctly. Time for a bit of Bene Gesserit punishment!

  "The Tleilaxu desire an Atreides for breeding," Taraza said. "I give you Darwi Odrade. More will be supplied."

  Waff came to a decision. "You may know much about the Honored Matres," he said, "but you -"

  "Whores!" Taraza whirled on him.

  "As you will. But there is a thing from them that your words reveal you do not know. I seal our bargain by telling you this. They can magnify the sensations of the orgasmic platform, transmitting this throughout a male body. They elicit the total sensual involvement of the male. Multiple orgasmic waves are created and may be continued by the... the female for an extended period."

  "Total involvement?" Taraza did not try to hide her astonishment.

  Odrade, too, listened with a sense of shock that she saw was shared by her Sisters present, even the acolytes. Only Sheeana seemed not to understand.

  "I tell you, Mother Superior Taraza," Waff said, a gloating smile on his face, "that we have duplicated this with our own people. Myself even! In my anger, I caused the Face Dancer who played the... female part to destroy itself. No one... I say, no one! may have such a hold on me!"

  "What hold?"

  "If it had been one of these... these whores, as you call them, I would have obeyed her without question in anything." He shuddered. "I barely had the will to... to destroy..." He shook his head in bewilderment at the memory. "Anger saved me."

  Taraza tried to swallow in a dry throat. "How..."

  "How is it done? Very well! But before I share this knowledge I warn you: If one of you ever tries to use this power over one of us, bloody slaughter will follow! We have prepared our Domel and all of our people to respond by killing all Reverend Mothers they can find at the slightest sign that you seek this power over us!"

  "None of us would do that, but not because of your threat. We are restrained by the knowledge that this would destroy us. Your bloody slaughter would not be necessary."

  "Oh? Then why does it not destroy these... these whores?"

  "It does! And it destroys everyone they touch!"

  "It has not destroyed me!"

  "God protects you, my Abdl," Taraza said. "As He protects all of the faithful."

  Convinced, Waff glanced around the room and back to Taraza. "Let all know that I fulfill my bond in the land of the Prophet. This is the way of it, then..." He waved a hand to two of his Face Dancer guards. "We will demonstrate."

  Much later, alone in the penthouse room, Odrade wondered if it had been wise to let Sheeana see the whole performance. Well, why not? Sheeana already was committed to the Sisterhood. And it would have aroused Waff's suspicions to send Sheeana away.

  There had been obvious sensual arousal in Sheeana as she watched the Face Dancer performance. The Training Proctors would have to call in their male assistants earlier than usual for Sheeana. What would Sheeana do then? Would she try this new knowledge on the men? Inhibitions must be raised in Sheeana to prevent that! She must be taught the dangers to herself.

  The Sisters and acolytes present had controlled themselves well, storing what they learned firmly in memory. Sheeana's education must be built on that observation. Others mastered such internal forces.

  The Face Dancer observers had remained inscrutable, but there had been things to see in Waff. He said he would destroy the
two demonstrators but what would he do first? Would he succumb to temptation? What thoughts went through his mind as he watched the Face Dancer male squirm in mind-blanking ecstasy?

  In a way, the demonstration reminded Odrade of the Rakian dance she had seen in the Great Square of Keen. In the short term, the dance had been deliberately unrhythmic but the progression created a long-term rhythm that repeated itself in some two hundred... steps. The dancers had stretched out their rhythm to a remarkable degree.

  As had the Face Dancer demonstrators.

  Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!

  Odrade thought about the dance, the long rhythm followed by chaotic violence. Siaynoq's glorious focusing of religious energies had devolved into a different kind of exchange. She thought about Sheeana's excited response to her glimpses of that dance in the Great Square. Odrade remembered asking Sheeana: "What did they share down there?"

  "The dancers, silly!"

  That response had not been permissible. "I've warned you about that tone, Sheeana. Do you wish to learn immediately what a Reverend Mother can do to punish you?"

  The words played themselves like ghost messages in Odrade's mind as she looked at the gathering darkness outside the Dar-es-Balat penthouse. A great loneliness welled up in her. All the others had gone from this room.

  Only the punished one remains!

  How bright-eyed Sheeana had been in that room above the Great Square, her mind so full of questions. "Why do you always talk about hurting and punishment?"

  "You must learn discipline. How can you control others when you cannot control yourself?"

  "I don't like that lesson."

  "None of us does very much... until later when we've learned the value of it by experience."

  As intended, that response had festered long in Sheeana's awareness. In the end, she had revealed all she knew about the dance.

  "Some of the dancers escape. Others go directly to Shaitan. The priests say they go to Shai-hulud."

  "What of the ones who survive?"

  "When they recover, they must join a great dance in the desert. If Shaitan comes there, they die. If Shaitan does not come, they are rewarded."

  Odrade had seen the pattern. Sheeana's explanatory words had not been necessary beyond that point, even though the recital had been allowed to continue. How bitter Sheeana's voice had been!

  "They get money, space in a bazaar, that kind of reward. The priests say they have proved that they are human."

  "Are the ones who fail not human?"

  Sheeana had remained silent for a long time in deep thought. The track was clear to Odrade, though: the Sisterhood's test of humanity! Her own passage into the acceptable humanity of the Sisterhood had already been duplicated by Sheeana. How soft that passage seemed in comparison to the other pains!

  In the dim light of the museum penthouse, Odrade held up her right hand, looking at it, remembering the agony box, and the gom jabbar poised at her neck ready to kill her if she flinched or cried out.

  Sheeana had not cried out, either. But she had known the answer to Odrade's question even before the agony box.

  "They are human but different."

  Odrade spoke aloud in the empty room with its displays from the Tyrant's no-chamber hoard.

  "What did you do to us, Leto? Are you only Shaitan talking to us? What would you force us to share now?"

  Was the fossil dance to become fossil sex?

  "Who are you talking to, Mother?"

  It was Sheeana's voice from the open doorway across the room. Her gray postulant's robe was only a faint shape there, growing larger as she approached.

  "Mother Superior sent me for you," Sheeana said as she came to a stop near Odrade.

  "I was talking to myself," Odrade said. She looked at the strangely quiet girl, remembering the gut-wrenching excitement of that moment when the Fulcrum Question had been asked of Sheeana.

  "Do you wish to be a Reverend Mother?"

  "Why are you talking to yourself, Mother?" There was a load of concern in Sheeana's voice. The Teaching Proctors would have their hands full removing those emotions.

  "I was remembering when I asked you if you wished to be a Reverend Mother," Odrade said. "It prompted other thoughts."

  "You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back nothing, disobeying you in nothing."

  "And you said: 'Is that all?' "

  "I didn't know very much, did I? I still don't know very much."

  "None of us does, child. Except that we're all in the dance together. And Shaitan will certainly come if the least of us fails."

  ***

  When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.

  - The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"

  The last greenish line of light fell out of the horizon before Burzmali gave the signal for them to move. It was dark by the time they reached the far side of Ysai and the perimeter road that was to lead them to Duncan. Clouds covered the sky, reflecting the city's lights downward onto the shapes of the urban hovels through which their guides directed them.

  These guides bothered Lucilla. They appeared out of side streets and from suddenly opened doorways to whisper new directions.

  Too many people knew about the fugitive pair and their intended rendezvous!

  She had come to grips with her hatred but the residue was a profound distrust of every person they saw. Hiding this behind the mechanical attitudes of a playfem with her customer had become increasingly difficult.

  There was slush on the pedestrian way beside the road, most of it scattered there by the passage of groundcars. Lucilla's feet were cold before they had gone half a kilometer and she was forced to expend energy compensating for the added bloodflow in her extremities.

  Burzmali walked silently, his head down, apparently lost in his own worries. Lucilla was not fooled. He heard every sound around them, saw every approaching vehicle. He hustled them off the pathway each time a groundcar approached. The cars went swishing past on their suspensors, the dirty slush flying from under their fanskirts and peppering the bushes along the road. Burzmali held her down beside him in the snow until he was sure the cars were out of sight and sound. Not that anyone riding in them could hear much except their own whirling passage.

  They had been walking for two hours before Burzmali stopped and took stock of the way ahead. Their destination was a perimeter community that had been described to them as "completely safe." Lucilla knew better. No place on Gammu was completely safe.

  Yellow lights cast an undershot glow on the clouds ahead of them, marking the location of the community. Their slushy progress took them through a tunnel under the perimeter road and up a low hill planted to some sort of orchard. The limbs were stark in the dim light.

  Lucilla glanced upward. The clouds were thinning. Gammu had many small moons - fortress no-ships. Some of them had been placed by Teg but she glimpsed lines of new ones sharing the guardian role. They appeared to be about four times the size of the brightest stars and they often traveled together, which made their reflected light useful but erratic because they moved fast - up across the sky and below the horizon in only a few hours. She glimpsed a string of six such moons through a break in the clouds, wondering if they were part of Teg's defense system.

  Momentarily, she reflected on the inherent weakness of the siege mentality that such defenses represented. Teg had been right about them. Mobility was the key to military success but she doubted that he had meant mobility on foot.

  There were no easy hiding places on the snow-whitened slope and Lucilla felt Burzmali's nervousness. What could they do here if someone came? A snow-covered depression led down from their position to the left, angling toward the community. It was not a road but she thought it might be a path.

  "Down this way," Burzmali said, leading them into the depression.

  The snow came up to their calves.

  "I hope these peo
ple are trustworthy," she said.

  "They hate the Honored Matres," he said. "That's enough for me."

  "The ghola had better be there!" She held back an even more angry response but could not keep herself from adding: "Their hatred isn't enough for me."

  It was better to expect the worst, she thought.

  She had come to a reassuring thought about Burzmali, though. He was like Teg. Neither of them pursued a course that would lead them into a dead end - not if they could help it. She suspected there were support forces concealed in the bushes around them even now.

  The snow-covered trail ended in a paved pathway, gently curved inward from the edges and kept free of snow by a melt system. There was a trickle of dampness in the center. Lucilla was several steps onto this path before she recognized what it must be - a magchute. It was an ancient magnetic transport base that once had carried goods or raw materials to a pre-Scattering factory.

  "It gets steeper here," Burzmali warned her. "They've carved steps in it but watch it. They're not very deep."

  They came presently to the end of the magchute. It stopped at a decrepit wall - local brick atop a plasteel foundation. The faint light of stars in a clearing sky revealed crude workmanship in the bricks - typical Famine-Times construction. The wall was a mass of vines and mottled fungus. The growth did little to conceal the cracked courses of the bricks and the crude efforts to fill chinks with mortar. A single row of narrow windows looked down onto the place where the magchute debouched into a mass of bushes and weeds. Three of the windows glowed electric blue with some inner activity that was accompanied by faint crackling sounds.

  "This was a factory in the old days," Burzmali said.

  "I have eyes and a memory," Lucilla snapped. Did this grunting male think her completely devoid of intelligence?

  Something creaked dismally off to their left. A patch of sod and weeds lifted atop a cellar door accompanied by an upward glow of brilliant yellow light.

  "Quick!" Burzmali led her at a swift run across thick vegetation and down a flight of steps exposed by the lifting door. The door creaked closed behind them in a grumbling of machinery.