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He could not see her face against the bright light and her words came from a great shadow place, as much within him as from Odrade.
That year he began studying the life of the Bashar Miles Teg, whose cells had started his new life. Odrade had explained some of this to him, holding up her fingernails. "I took tiny scrapings from his neck--cells of his skin and they held all we needed to bring you to life."
There was something intense about the orchards that year, fruit larger and heavier, bees almost frenetic.
"It's because of the desert growing larger down there in the south," Odrade said. She held his hand as they walked through a dew-fresh morning beneath burgeoning apple trees.
Teg stared southward through the trees, momentarily mesmerized by leaf-dappled sunlight. He had studied about the desert, and he thought he could feel the weight of it on this place.
"Trees can sense their end approaching," Odrade said. "Life breeds more intensely when threatened."
"The air is very dry," he said. "That must be the desert."
"Notice how some of the leaves have gone brown and curled at the edges? We've had to irrigate heavily this year."
He liked it that she seldom talked down to him. It was mostly one person to another. He saw curled brown on leaves. The desert did that.
Deep in the orchard, they listened quietly for a time to birds and insects. Bees working the clover of a nearby pasture came to investigate but he was pheromone-marked, as were all who walked freely on Chapterhouse. They buzzed past him, sensed identifiers and went away about their business with blossoms.
Apples. Odrade pointed westward. Peaches. His attention went where she directed. And yes, there were the cherries east of them beyond the pasture. He saw resin ribbing on the limbs.
Seeds and young shoots had been brought here on the original no-ships some fifteen hundred years ago, she said, and had been planted with loving care.
Teg visualized hands grubbing in dirt, gently patting earth around young shoots, careful irrigation, the fencing to confine the cattle to wild pastures around the first Chapterhouse plantations and buildings.
By this time he already had begun learning about the giant sandworm the Sisterhood had spirited from Rakis. Death of that worm had produced creatures called sandtrout. Sandtrout were why the desert grew. Some of this history touched accounts of his previous incarnation--a man they called "The Bashar." A great soldier who had died when terrible women called Honored Matres destroyed Rakis.
Teg found such studies both fascinating and troubling. He sensed gaps in himself, places were memories ought to be. The gaps called out to him in dreams. And sometimes when he fell into reverie, faces appeared before him. He could almost hear words. Then there were times he knew the names of things before anyone told him. Especially names of weapons.
Momentous things grew in his awareness. This entire planet would become desert, a change started because Honored Matres wanted to kill these Bene Gesserit who raised him.
Reverend Mothers who controlled his life often awed him--black-robed, austere, those blue-in-blue eyes with absolutely no white. The spice did that, they said.
Only Odrade showed him anything he took for real affection and Odrade was someone very important. Everyone called her Mother Superior and that was what she told him to call her except when they were alone in the orchards. Then he could call her Mother.
On a morning walk near harvest time in his ninth year, just over the third rise in the apple orchards north of Central, they came on a shallow depression free of trees and lush with many different plants. Odrade put a hand on his shoulder and held him where they could admire black stepping-stones in a meander track through massed greenery and tiny flowers. She was in an odd mood. He heard it in her voice.
"Ownership is an interesting question," she said. "Do we own this planet or does it own us?"
"I like the smells here," he said.
She released him and urged him gently ahead of her. "We planted for the nose here, Miles. Aromatic herbs. Study them carefully and look them up when you get back to the library. Oh, do step on them!" when he started to avoid a plant runner in his path.
He placed his right foot firmly on green tendrils and inhaled pungent odors.
"They were made to be walked on and give up their savor," Odrade said. "Proctors have been teaching you how to deal with nostalgia. Have they told you nostalgia often is driven by the sense of smell?"
"Yes, Mother." Turning to look back at where he had stepped, he said: "That's rosemary."
"How do you know?" Very intense.
He shrugged. "I just know."
"That may be an original memory." She sounded pleased.
As they continued their walk in the aromatic hollow, Odrade's voice once more became pensive. "Each planet has its own character where we draw patterns of Old Earth. Sometimes, it's only a faint sketch, but here we have succeeded."
She knelt and pulled a twig from an acid-green plant. Crushing it in her fingers, she held it to his nose. "Sage."
She was right but he could not say how he knew.
"I've smelled that in food. Is that like melange?"
"It improves flavor but won't change consciousness." She stood and looked down at him from her full height. "Mark this place well, Miles. Our ancestral worlds are gone, but here we have recaptured part of our origins."
He sensed she was teaching him something important. He asked Odrade: "Why did you wonder if this planet owned us?"
"My Sisterhood believes we are stewards of the land. Do you know about stewards?"
"Like Roitiro, my friend Yorgi's father. Yorgi says his oldest sister will be steward of their plantation someday."
"Correct. We have a longer residence on some planets than any other people we know of but we are only stewards."
"If you don't own Chapterhouse, who does?"
"Perhaps nobody. My question is: How have we marked each other, my Sisterhood, and this planet?"
He looked up at her face then down at his hands. Was Chapterhouse marking him right now?
"Most of the marks are deep inside us." She took his hand. "Come along." They left the aromatic dell and climbed up into Roitiro's domain, Odrade speaking as they went.
"The Sisterhood seldom creates botanical gardens," she said. "Gardens must support far more than eyes and nose."
"Food?"
"Yes, supportive first of our lives. Gardens produce food. That dell back there is harvested for our kitchens."
He felt her words flow into him, lodging there among the gaps. He sensed planning for centuries ahead: trees to replace building beams, to hold watersheds, plants to keep lake and river banks from crumbling, to hold topsoil safe from rain and wind, to maintain seashores and even in the waters to make places for fish to breed. The Bene Gesserit also thought of trees for shade and shelter, or to cast interesting shadows on lawns.
"Trees and other plants fo
r all of our symbiotic relationships," she said.
"Symbiotic?" It was a new word.
She explained with something she knew he already had encountered--going out with others to harvest mushrooms.
"Fungi won't grow except in the company of friendly roots. Each has a symbiotic relationship with a special plant. Each growing thing takes something it needs from the other."
She went on at length and, bored with learning, he kicked a clump of grass, then saw how she stared at him in that disturbing way. He had done something offensive. Why was it right to step on one growing thing and not on another?
"Miles! Grass keeps the wind from carrying topsoil into difficult places such as the bottoms of rivers."
He knew that tone. Reprimanding. He stared down at the grass he had offended.
"These grasses feed our cattle. Some have seeds we eat in bread and other foods. Some cane grasses are windbreaks."
He knew that! Trying to divert her, he said: "Wind-brakes?" spelling it.
