Heretics of Dune

  "Sheeana wishes it," Odrade lied.

  Albertus opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. She could see acceptance flood through him.

  "You will return to your fellows with my warning," Odrade said. "The survival of Rakis and of your priesthood depend utterly on how well you obey me. You will not hinder us in the slightest! And as to these puerile plots against us--Sheeana reveals to us your every evil thought!"

  Albertus surprised her then. He shook his head and emitted a dry chuckle. Odrade already had noted that many of these priests enjoyed discomfiture but had not suspected that they might find amusement in their own failures.

  "I find your laughter shallow," she said.

  Albertus shrugged and restored some of his facial mask. Odrade had seen several such masks on him. Facades! He wore them in layers. And far down under all of that defensiveness lay the someone who cared, the one she had exposed here so briefly. These priests had a dangerous way of falling into florid explanations, though, when taxed too heavily with questions.

  I must restore the one who cares, Odrade thought. She cut him off as he started to speak.

  "No more! You will wait upon me when I return from the desert. For now, you are my messenger. Carry my message accurately and you will win a greater reward than you have ever imagined. Fail and you will suffer the agonies of Shaitan!"

  Odrade watched Albertus scurry out of the courtyard, shoulders hunched, his head thrust forward as though he could not get his mouth within speaking distance of his peers soon enough.

  On the whole, she thought, it had gone well. A calculated risk and very dangerous to her personally. She was sure there had been assassins on the balconies above her waiting for a signal from Albertus. And now, the fear he carried back with him was a thing the Bene Gesserit understood intimately through millennia of manipulations. As contagiously virulent as any plague. The teaching Sisters called it "a directed hysteria." It had been directed (aimed was more accurate) at the heart of the Rakian priesthood. It could be relied upon, especially with the reinforcement that now would be set in motion. The priests would submit. Only the few immune heretics were to be feared now.

  This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here--the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

  --The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives

  "What you are doing is too dangerous," Teg said. "My orders are to protect you and strengthen you. I cannot permit this to continue."

  Teg and Duncan stood in the long, wood-paneled hallway just outside the no-globe's practice floor. It was late afternoon by the clock of their arbitrary routine and Lucilla had just swept away in anger after a vituperative confrontation.

  Every meeting between Duncan and Lucilla lately had taken on the nature of a battle. Just now, she had stood in the doorway to the practice hall, a solid figure saved from being stolid by her softening curves, the seductive movements obvious to both males.

  "Stop it, Lucilla!" Duncan had ordered.

  Only her voice betrayed her anger: "How long do you think I will wait to carry out my orders?"

  "Until you or someone else tells me that I--"

  "Taraza requires things of you that none of us here knows!" Lucilla said.

  Teg tried to soothe the mounting angers: "Please. Isn't it enough that Duncan continues to improve his performance? In a few days, I will start keeping regular watch outside. We can--"

  "You can stop interfering with me, damn you!" Lucilla snapped. She whirled and stalked away.

  As he saw the hard resolution on Duncan's face now, something furious began to work in Teg. He felt impelled by the necessities of their isolated situation. His intellect, that marvelously honed Mentat instrument, was shielded here from the mental uproar to which it adjusted on the outside. He thought that if he could only silence his mind, bring everything to stillness, all things would become clear to him.

  "Why are you holding your breath, Bashar?"

  Duncan's voice impaled Teg. It required a supreme act of will to resume normal breathing. He felt the emotions of his two companions in the no-globe as an ebb and flow temporarily removed from other forces.

  Other forces.

  Mentat awareness could be an idiot in the presence of other forces that swept through the universe. There might exist in the universe people whose lives were infused with powers he could not imagine. Before such forces he would be chaff moved on the froth of wild currents.

  Who could plunge into such an uproar and emerge intact?

  "What can Lucilla possibly do if I continue to resist her?" Duncan asked.

  "Has she used Voice on you?" Teg asked. His own voice sounded remote to him.

  "Once."

  "You resisted?" Remote surprise lurked somewhere within Teg.

  "I learned the way of that from Paul Muad'dib himself."

  "She is capable of paralyzing you and--"

  "I think her orders prohibit violence."

  "What is violence, Duncan?"

  "I'm going to the showers, Bashar. Are you coming?"

  "In a few minutes." Teg took a deep breath, sensing how close he was to exhaustion. This afternoon on the practice floor and afterward had drained him. He watched Duncan leave. Where was Lucilla? What was she planning? How long could she wait? That was the central question and it put the no-globe's peculiar emphasis on their isolation from Time.

  Again, he sensed that ebb and flow which their three lives influenced. I must talk to Lucilla! Where has she gone? The library? No! There is something else I must do first.

  Lucilla sat in the room she had chosen for her personal quarters. It was a small space with an ornate bed filling an inset into one wall. Gross and subtle signs around her said this had been the room of a favorite Harkonnen hetaira. Pastel blues with darker blue accents shaded the fabrics. Despite the baroque carvings on bed, alcove, ceiling, and every functioning appurtenance, the room itself could be swept out of her consciousness once she relaxed here. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes against the sexually gross figures on the alcove ceiling.

  Teg will have to be dealt with.

  It would have to be done in such a way that it did not offend Taraza or weaken the ghola. Teg presented a special problem in many ways, especially in the way his mental processes could dip into and out of deeper sources akin to those of the Bene Gesserit.

  The Reverend Mother who bore him, of course!

  Something passed from such a mother to such a child. It began in the womb and probably did not end even when they were finally separated. He had never undergone the all-ravening transmutation that produced Abominations... no, not that. But he had subtle and real powers. Those born of Reverend Mothers learned things impossible to others.

  Teg knew precisely how Lucilla viewed love in all of its manifestations. She had seen it on his face that once in his quarters at the Keep.

  "Calculating witch!"

  He might as well have spoken it aloud.

  She recalled the way she had favored him with her benign smile and dominating expression. That had been a mistake, demeaning to both of them. She sensed in such thoughts a latent sympathy for Teg. Somewhere within her, despite all of the careful Bene Gesserit training, there were chinks in her armor. Her teachers had warned her about that many times.

  "To be capable of inducing real love, you must feel it, but only temporarily. And once is enough!"

  Teg's reactions to the Duncan Idaho ghola said much. Teg was both drawn to and repelled by their young charge.

  As I am.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake
not to seduce Teg.

  In her sex education, where she had been taught to gain strength from intercourse rather than lose herself in it, her teachers had emphasized analysis and historical comparisons, of which there were many in a Reverend Mother's Other Memories.

  Lucilla focused her thoughts on Teg's male presence. Doing this, she could feel a female response, her flesh wanting Teg close to her and aroused to sexual peak--ready for the moment of mystery.

  Faint amusement crept into Lucilla's awareness. Not orgasm. No scientific labels! It was purest Bene Gesserit cant: moment of mystery, the Imprinter's ultimate specialty. Immersion in the long Bene Gesserit continuity required this concept. She had been taught to believe deeply in a duality: the scientific knowledge by which the Breeding Mistresses guided them but, at the same time, the moment of mystery that confounded all knowledge. Bene Gesserit history and science said the procreative drive must remain irretrievably buried in the psyche. It could not be removed without destroying the species.

  The safety net.

  Lucilla gathered her sexual forces around her now as only a Bene Gesserit Imprinter could. She began to focus her thoughts on Duncan. By now, he would be in the showers and thinking about this evening's training session with his Reverend Mother-teacher.

  I will go to my student presently, she thought. The important lesson must be taught or he will not be fully prepared for Rakis.

  Those were Taraza's instructions.

  Lucilla swung the focus of her thoughts fully onto Duncan. It was almost as though she saw him standing naked under the shower.

  How little he understood of what there might be to learn!

  Duncan sat alone in the dressing cubicle off the showers which adjoined the practice hall. He was immersed in a deep sadness. This brought remembered pains to old wounds that this young flesh had never experienced.

  Some things never changed! The Sisterhood was at its old-old games again.

  He looked up and around this dark-paneled Harkonnen place. Arabesques were carved into walls and ceiling, strange designs in the tesserae of the floor. Monsters and lovely human bodies intermingled across the same defining lines. Only a flicker of attention separated one from the other.

  Duncan looked down at this body that the Tleilaxu and their axlotl tanks had produced for him. It still felt strange at moments. He had been a man of many adult experiences in the last instant he remembered from his pre-ghola life--fighting off a swarm of Sardaukar warriors, giving his young Duke a chance to escape.

  His Duke! Paul had been no older than this flesh then. Conditioned, though, the way the Atreides always were: Loyalty and honor above all else.

  The way they conditioned me after they saved me from the Harkonnens.

  Something within him could not evade that ancient debt. He knew its source. He could outline the process by which it had been embedded in him.

  There it remained.

  Duncan glanced at the tiled floor. Words had been worked in the tile along the cubicle's splashboard. It was a script that one part of him identified as an ancient thing from the old Harkonnen times but that another part of him found to be an all-too-familiar Galach.

  "CLEAN SWEET CLEAN BRIGHT CLEAN PURE CLEAN"

  The ancient script repeated itself around the room's perimeter as though the words themselves might create something that Duncan knew was alien to the Harkonnens of his memories.

  Over the door to the showers, more script: "CONFESS THY HEART AND FIND PURITY"

  A religious admonition in a Harkonnen stronghold? Had the Harkonnens changed in the centuries after his death? Duncan found this hard to believe. These words were things that the builders probably had thought appropriate.

  He felt rather than heard Lucilla enter the room behind him. Duncan stood and fastened the clips of the tunic he had appropriated from the nullentropy bins (but only after removing all Harkonnen insignia!).

  Without turning, he said: "What now, Lucilla?"

  She stroked the fabric of the tunic along his left arm. "The Harkonnens had rich tastes."

  Duncan spoke quietly: "Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill me."

  She recoiled.

  He stared into her eyes. "I am not some damned stud for the witches!"

  "Is that what you think we want of you?"

  "Nobody has said what you want of me but your actions are obvious!"

  He stood poised on the balls of his feet. The unawakened thing within him stirred and sent his pulse racing.

  Lucilla studied him carefully. Damn that Miles Teg! She had not expected resistance to take this form. There was no doubting Duncan's sincerity. Words by themselves no longer would serve. He was immune to Voice.

  Truth.

  It was the only weapon left to her.

  "Duncan, I do not know precisely what it is Taraza expects you to do on Rakis. I can guess but my guess may be wrong."

  "Guess, then."

  "There is a young girl on Rakis, barely into her teens. Her name is Sheeana. The worms of Rakis obey her. Somehow, the Sisterhood must gather this talent into its own store of abilities."

  "What could I possibly... "

  "If I knew, I certainly would tell you now."

  He heard her sincerity unmasked by her desperation.

  "What does your talent have to do with this?" he demanded.

  "Only Taraza and her councillors know."

  "They want some hold on me, something from which I cannot escape!"

  Lucilla already had arrived at this deduction but she had not expected him to see it that quickly. Duncan's youthful face concealed a mind that worked in ways she had not yet fathomed. Lucilla's thoughts raced.

  "Control the worms and you could revive the old religion." It was Teg's voice from the doorway behind Lucilla.

  I did not hear him arrive!

  She whirled. Teg stood there with one of the antique Harkonnen lasguns held casually across his left arm, its muzzle directed at her.

  "This is to insure that you listen to me," he said.

  "How long have you been there listening?"

  Her angry glare did not change his expression.

  "From the moment you admitted you don't know what Taraza expects of Duncan," Teg said. "Nor do I. But I can make a few Mentat projections--nothing firm yet but all of them suggestive. Tell me if I am wrong."

  "About what?"

  He glanced at Duncan. "One of the things you were told to do was to make him irresistible to most women."

  Lucilla tried to conceal her dismay. Taraza had warned her to conceal this from Teg as long as possible. She saw that concealment no longer was possible. Teg had read her reaction with those damnable abilities imparted to him by his damnable mother!

  "A great deal of energy is being gathered and aimed at Rakis," Teg said. He looked steadily at Duncan. "No matter what the Tleilaxu have buried in him, he has the stamp of ancient humankind in his genes. Is that what the Breeding Mistresses need?"

  "A damned Bene Gesserit stud!" Duncan said.

  "What do you intend to do with that weapon?" Lucilla asked. She nodded at the antique lasgun in Teg's hands.

  "This? I didn't even put a charge cartridge in it." He lowered the lasgun and leaned it into a comer beside him.

  "Miles Teg, you will be punished!" Lucilla grated.

  "That will have to wait," he said. "It's almost night outside. I've been out there under the life-shield. Burzmali has been here. He has left his sign to tell me he read the message I scratched with those animal marks on the trees."

  A glittering alertness came into Duncan's eyes.

  "What will you do?" Lucilla asked.

  "I have left new marks arranging a rendezvous. Right now, we are all going up to the library. We are going to study the maps. We will commit them to memory. At the very least, we should know where we are when we run."

  She gave him the benefit of a curt nod.

  Dunc
an noted her movement with only part of his awareness. His mind already had leaped ahead to the ancient equipment in the Harkonnen library. He had been the one to show both Lucilla and Teg how to use it correctly, calling up an ancient map of Giedi Prime dating from the time when the no-globe had been built.

  With Duncan's pre-ghola memory as guide and his own more modern knowledge of the planet, Teg had tried to bring the map up to date.

  "Forest Guard Station" became "Bene Gesserit Keep."

  "Part of it was a Harkonnen hunting lodge," Duncan had said. "They hunted human game raised and conditioned specifically for that purpose."

  Towns vanished under Teg's updating. Some cities remained but received new labels. "Ysai," the nearest metropolis, had been marked "Barony" on the original map.

  Duncan's eyes went hard in memory. "That's where they tortured me."

  When Teg exhausted his memory of the planet, much was marked unknown but there were frequent curly-ended Bene Gesserit symbols to identify the places where Taraza's people had told Teg he might find temporary sanctuary.

  Those were the places Teg wanted committed to memory.

  As he turned to lead them up to the library, Teg said: "I will erase the map when we have learned it. There's no telling who might find this place and study it."

  Lucilla swept past him. "It's on your head, Miles!" she said.

  Teg called after her retreating back: "A Mentat tells you that I did what was required of me."

  She spoke without turning: "How logical!"

  This room reconstructs a bit of the desert of Dune. The sandcrawler directly in front of you dates from the Atreides times. Grouped around it, moving clockwise from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice factory and the other support equipment. All are explained at each station. Note the illuminated quotation above the display: "FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE SEAS AND OF THE TREASURE IN THE SAND." This ancient religious quotation was oft repeated by the famous Gurney Halleck.

  --Guide Announcement, Museum of Dar-es-Balat

  The worm did not slow its relentless progress until just before dusk. By then, Odrade had played out her questions and still had no answers. How did Sheeana control the worms? Sheeana said she was not steering her Shaitan in this direction. What was this hidden language to which the desert monster responded? Odrade knew that her Sister-guardians up there in the 'thopters that paced them would be exhausting the same questions plus one more.