Heretics of Dune (Page 101)

"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 corner 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.

Duncan 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.

Why did Odrade let this ride continue?

They might even hazard a few guesses: She does not call us in because that might disturb the beast. She does not trust us to pluck her party from its back.

The truth was far simpler: curiosity.

The hissing passage of the worm could have been a surging vessel breasting seas. The dry flinty odors of overheated sand, swept across them by a following wind, said otherwise. Only open desert stretched around them now, kilometer after kilometer of whaleback dunes as regular in their spacing as ocean waves.

Waff had been silent for a long period. He crouched in a miniature reproduction of Odrade’s position, his attention directed ahead, a blank expression on his face. His most recent statement:

"God guard the faithful in the hour of our trial!"

Odrade thought of him as living proof that a strong enough fanaticism could endure for ages. Zensunni and the old Sufi survived in the Tleilaxu. It was like a deadly microbe that had lain dormant all of those millennia, waiting for the right host to feed its virulence.

What will happen to the thing I planted in the Rakian priesthood? she wondered. Saint Sheeana was a certainty.

Sheeana sat on a ring of her Shaitan, her robe pulled up to expose her thin shanks. She gripped the ring with both hands between her legs.

She had said that her first worm ride went directly to the city of Keen. Why there? Had the worm simply been taking her to her own kind?

This one beneath them now certainly had a different goal. Sheeana no longer questioned but then Odrade had ordered her to remain silent and practice the low trance. That, at least, would assure that every last detail of this experience could be recalled easily from her memory. If there were a hidden language between Sheeana and worm, they would find it later.

Odrade peered at the horizon. The remnant base of the ancient wall around the Sareer was only a few kilometers ahead. Long shadows from it lay across the dunes, telling Odrade that the remnant was higher than she had originally suspected. It was a shattered and broken outline now, with great boulders strewn along its base. The notch where the Tyrant had tumbled from his bridge into the Idaho River lay well to their right, at least three kilometers off their path. No river flowed there now.