Heretics of Dune (Page 164)

It is unsettling to dream another’s dreams.

Taraza again.

Taraza who had played such a dangerous game with the future of the entire Sisterhood hanging in the balance! How carefully she had timed the leaking of word to the whores that the Tleilaxu had built dangerous abilities into the ghola. And the attack on the Gammu Keep confirmed that the information had reached its source. The brutal nature of that attack, though, had warned Taraza that she had little time. The whores would be sure to assemble forces for the total destruction of Gammu – just to kill that one ghola.

So much had depended on Teg.

She saw the Bashar there in her own assemblage of Other Memories: the father she had never really known.

I didn’t know him at the end, either.

It could be weakening to dig into those memories, but she could not escape the demands of that luring reservoir.

Odrade thought of the Tyrant’s words: "The terrible field of my past! Answers leap up like a frightened flock blackening the sky of my inescapable memories."

Odrade held herself like a swimmer balanced just below the water’s surface.

I most likely will be replaced, Odrade thought. I may even be reviled. Bellonda certainly was not giving easy agreement to the new state of command. No matter. Survival of the Sisterhood was all that should concern any of them.

Odrade floated up out of the Other Memories and lifted her gaze to look across the room into the shadowy niche where the bust of a woman could be discerned in the low light of the room’s glowglobes. The bust remained a vague shape in its shadows but Odrade knew that face well: Chenoeh, guardian symbol of Chapter House.

"There but for the grace of God…"

Every sister who came through the spice agony (as Chenoeh had not) said or thought that same thing, but what did it really mean? Careful breeding and careful training produced the successful ones in sufficient numbers. Where was the hand of God in that? God certainly was not the worm they had brought from Rakis. Was the presence of God felt only in the successes of the Sisterhood?

I fall prey to the pretensions of my own Missionaria Protectiva!

She knew that these were similar to thoughts and questions that had been heard in this room on countless occasions. Bootless! Still, she could not bring herself to remove that guardian bust from the niche where it had reposed for so long.

I am not superstitious, she told herself. I am not a compulsive person. This is a matter of tradition. Such things have a value well known to us.

Certainly, no bust of me will ever be so honored.

She thought of Waff and his Face Dancers dead with Miles Teg in the terrible destruction of Rakis. It did not do to dwell on the bloody attrition being suffered in the Old Empire. Better to think about the muscles of retribution being created by the blundering violence of the Honored Matres.

Teg knew!

The recently concluded Council session had subsided in fatigue without firm conclusions. Odrade counted herself lucky to have diverted attention into a few immediate concerns dear to them all.

The punishments: Those had occupied them for a time. Historical precedents fleshed out the Archival analyses to a satisfying form. Those assemblages of humans who allied themselves with the Honored Matres were in for some shocks.

Ix would certainly overextend itself. They had not the slightest appreciation of how competition from the Scattering would crush them.

The Guild would be shunted aside and made to pay dearly for its melange and its machinery. Guild and Ix, thrown together, would fall together.

The Fish Speakers could be mostly ignored. Satellites of Ix, they were already fading into a past that humans would abandon.

And the Bene Tleilax. Ah, yes, the Tleilaxu. Waff had succumbed to the Honored Mattes. He had never admitted it but the truth was plain. "Just once and with one of my own Face Dancers."

Odrade smiled grimly, remembering her father’s bitter kiss.

I will have another niche made, she thought. I will commission another bust: Miles Teg, the Great Heretic!

Lucilla’s suspicions about Teg were disquieting, though. Had he been prescient at last and able to see the no-ships? Well, the Breeding Mistresses could explore those suspicions.

"We have laagered up!" Bellonda accused.

They all knew the meaning of that word: they had retreated into a fortress position for the long night of the whores.

Odrade realized she did not much care for Bellonda, the way she laughed occasionally to expose those wide, blunt teeth.

They had discussed the cell samples from Sheeana for a long time. The "proof of Siona" was there. She had the ancestry that shielded her from prescience and could leave the no-ship.

Duncan was an unknown.

Odrade turned her thoughts to the ghola out there in the grounded no-ship. Lifting herself from the chair, she crossed to the dark window and looked in the direction of the distant landing field.

Did they dare risk releasing Duncan from the shielding of that ship? The cell studies said he was a mixture of many Idaho gholas – some descendant of Siona. But what of the taint from the original?

No. He must remain confined.

And what of Murbella? – pregnant Murbella? An Honored Matre dishonored.

"The Tleilaxu intended for me to kill the Imprinter," Duncan said.

"Will you try to kill the whore?" That was Lucilla’s question.

"She is not an Imprinter," Duncan said.

The Council had discussed at length the possible nature of the bonding between Duncan and Murbella. Lucilla maintained there was no bonding at all, that the two remained wary opponents.

"Best not to risk putting them together."

The sexual prowess of the whores would have to be studied at length, though. Perhaps a meeting between Duncan and Murbella in the no-ship could be risked. With careful protective measures, of course.