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At the school there had been rumors that some did not survive the Reverend Mother ordeal, that the drug took them.
Jessica focused her attention on the Reverend Mother Ramallo, aware now that all this was happening in a frozen instant of time--suspended time for her alone.
Why is time suspended? she asked herself. She stared at the frozen expressions around her, seeing a dust mote above Chani's head, stopped there.
Waiting.
The answer to this instant came like an explosion in her consciousness : her personal time was suspended to save her life.
She focused on the psychokinesthetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled.
That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention--the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look.
This realization returned a small measure of confidence, and again she ventured to focus on the psychokinesthetic extension, becoming a mote-self that searched within her for danger.
She found it within the drug she had swallowed.
The stuff was dancing particles within her, its motions so rapid that even frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles. She began recognizing familiar structures, atomic linkages: a carbon atom here, helical wavering... a glucose molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a protein... a methyl-protein configuration.
Ah-h-h!
It was a soundless mental sigh within her as she saw the nature of the poison.
With her psychokinesthetic probing, she moved into it, shifted an oxygen mote, allowed another carbon mote to link, reattached a linkage of oxygen... hydrogen.
The change spread... faster and faster as the catalyzed reaction opened its surface of contact.
The suspension of time relaxed its hold upon her, and she sensed motion. The tube spout from the sack was touched to her mouth-gently, collecting a drop of moisture.
Chani's taking the catalyst from my body to change the poison in that sack, Jessica thought. Why?
Someone eased her to a sitting position. She saw the old Reverend Mother Ramallo being brought to sit beside her on the carpeted ledge. A dry hand touched her neck.
And there was another psychokinesthetic mote within her awareness! Jessica tried to reject it, but the mote swept closer... closer.
They touched!
It was like an ultimate simpatico, being two people at once: not telepathy, but mutual awareness.
With the old Reverend Mother!
But Jessica saw that the Reverend Mother didn't think of herself as old. An image unfolded before the mutual mind's eye: a young girl with a dancing spirit and tender humor.
Within the mutual awareness, the young girl said, "Yes, that is how I am."
Jessica could only accept the words, not respond to them.
"You'll have it all soon, Jessica," the inward image said.
This is hallucination, Jessica told herself.
"You know better than that," the inward image said. "Swiftly now, do not fight me. There isn't much time. We...." There came a long pause, then: "You should've told us you were pregnant!"
Jessica found the voice that talked within the mutual awareness. "Why?"
"This changes both of you! Holy Mother, what have we done?"
Jessica sensed a forced shift in the mutual awareness, saw another mote-presence with the inward eye. The other mote darted wildly here, there, circling. It radiated pure terror.
"You'll have to be strong," the old Reverend Mother's image-presence said. "Be thankful it's a daughter you carry. This would've killed a male fetus. Now... carefully, gently... touch your daughter-presence. Be your daughter-presence. Absorb the fear... soothe... use your courage and your strength... gently now... gently...."
The other whirling mote swept near, and Jessica compelled herself to touch it.
Terror threatened to overwhelm her.
She fought it the only way she knew: "I shall not fear. Fear is the mind killer.... "
The litany brought a semblance of calm. The other mote lay quiescent against her.
Words won't work, Jessica told herself.
She reduced herself to basic emotional reactions, radiated love, comfort, a warm snuggling of protection.
The terror receded.
Again, the presence of the old Reverend Mother asserted itself, but now there was a tripling of mutual awareness--two active and one that lay quietly absorbing.
"Time compels me," the Reverend Mother said within the awareness. "I have much to give you. And I do not know if your daughter can accept all this while remaining sane. But it must be: the needs of the tribe are paramount."
"What--"
"Remain silent and accept!"
Experiences began to unroll before Jessica. It was like a lecture strip in a subliminal training projector at the Bene Gesserit school... but faster... blindingly faster.
Yet... distinct.
She knew each experience as it happened: there was a lover--virile, bearded, with the Fremen eyes, and Jessica saw his strength and tenderness, all of him in one blink-moment, through the Reverend Mother's memory.
There was no time now to think of what this might be doing to the daughter fetus, only time to accept and record. The experiences poured in on Jessica--birth, life, death--important matters and unimportant, an outpouring of single-view time.
Why should a fall of sand from a clifftop stick in the memory? she asked herself.
Too late, Jessica saw what was happening: the old woman was dying and, in dying, pouring her experiences into Jessica's awareness as water is poured into a cup. The other mote faded back into pre-birth awareness as Jessica watched it. And, dying-in-conception, the old Reverend Mother left her life in Jessica's memory with one last sighing blur of words.
"I've been a long time waiting for you," she said. "Here is my life."
There it was, encapsuled, all of it.
Even the moment of death.
I am now a Reverend Mother, Jessica realized.
And she knew with a generalized awareness that she had become, in truth, precisely what was meant by a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. The poison drug had transformed her.
This wasn't exactly how they did it at the Bene Gesserit school, she knew. No one had ever introduced her to the mysteries of it, but she knew.
The end result was the same.
Jessica sensed the da
ughter-mote still touching her inner awareness, probed it without response.
A terrible sense of loneliness crept through Jessica in the realization of what had happened to her. She saw her own life as a pattern that had slowed and all life around her speeded up so that the dancing interplay became clearer.
The sensation of mote-awareness faded slightly, its intensity easing as her body relaxed from the threat of the poison, but still she felt that other mote, touching it with a sense of guilt at what she had allowed to happen to it.
I did it, my poor, unformed, dear little daughter, I brought you into this universe and exposed your awareness to all its varieties without any defenses.
A tiny outflowing of love-comfort, like a reflection of what she had poured into it, came from the other mote.
Before Jessica could respond, she felt the adab presence of demanding memory. There was something that needed doing. She groped for it, realizing she was being impeded by a muzziness of the changed drug permeating her senses.
I could change that, she thought. I could take away the drug action and make it harmless. But she sensed this would be an error. I'm within a rite of joining.
Then she knew what she had to do.
Jessica opened her eyes, gestured to the watersack now being held above her by Chani.
"It has been blessed," Jessica said. "Mingle the waters, let the change come to all, that the people may partake and share in the blessing."
Let the catalyst do its work, she thought. Let the people drink of it and have their awareness of each other heightened for awhile. The drug is safe now... now that a Reverend Mother has changed it.
Still, the demanding memory worked on her, thrusting. There was another thing she had to do, she realized, but the drug made it difficult to focus.
Ah-h-h-h-h ... the old Reverend Mother.
"I have met the Reverend Mother Ramallo," Jessica said. "She is gone, but she remains. Let her memory be honored in the rite."
Now, where did I get those words? Jessica wondered.
And she realized they came from another memory, the life that had been given to her and now was part of herself. Something about that gift felt incomplete, though.
"Let them have their orgy, " the other-memory said within her. "They've little enough pleasure out of living. Yes, and you and I need this little time to become acquainted before I recede and pour out through your memories. Already, I feel myself being tied to bits of you. Ah-h-h, you've a mind filled with interesting things. So many things I'd never imagined."
