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"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.
