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"Sometimes I think you're a comic, Duncan."
"If I can't laugh at myself I'm really lost."
"Laugh at your pretensions to humor, too?"
"Those first." He turned toward her and cupped her left breast in his hand, feeling the nipple harden under his palm. "Did you know I was never weaned?"
"Never in all of those..."
"Not once."
"I might have guessed." A smile formed fleetingly on her lips, and abruptly both of them were laughing, clutching each other, helpless with it. Presently, Murbella said, "Damn, damn, damn."
"Damn who?" as his laughter subsided and they pulled apart, forcing the separation.
"Not who, what. Damn fate!"
"I don't think fate cares."
"I love you and I'm not supposed to do that if I'm to be a proper Reverend Mother."
He hated these excursions so close to self-pity. Joke then! "You've never been a proper anything." He massaged the pregnant swelling of her abdomen.
"I am proper!"
"That's a word they left out when they made you."
She pushed his hand away and sat up to look down at him. "Reverend Mothers are never supposed to love."
"I know that." Did my anguish reveal itself?
She was too caught up in her own worries. "When I get to the Spice Agony..."
"Love! I don't like the idea of agony associated with you in any way."
"How can I avoid it? I'm already in the chute. Very soon they'll have me up to speed. I'll go very fast then."
He wanted to turn away but her eyes held him.
"Truly, Duncan. I can feel it. In a way, it's like pregnancy. There comes a point when it's too dangerous to abort. You must go through with it."
"So we love each other!" Forcing his thoughts away from one danger into another.
"And they forbid it."
He looked up at the comeyes. "The watchdogs are watching us and they have fangs."
"I know. I'm talking to them right now. My love for you is not a flaw. Their coldness is the flaw. They're just like Honored Matres!"
A game where one of the pieces can't be moved.
He wanted to shout it but listeners behind the comeyes would hear more than spoken words. Murbella was right. It was dangerous to think you could gull Reverend Mothers.
Something veiled in her eyes as she looked down at him. "How very strange you looked just then." He recognized the Reverend Mother she might become.
Veer away from that thought!
Thinking about the strangeness of his memories sometimes diverted her. She thought his previous incarnations made him somehow similar to a Reverend Mother.
"I've died so many times."
"You remember it?" The same question every time.
He shook his head, not daring to say anything more for the watchdogs to interpret.
Not the deaths and reawakenings.
Those became dulled by repetition. Sometimes he didn't even bother to put them into his secret data-dump. No ... it was the unique encounters with other humans, the long collection of recognitions.
That was a thing Sheeana claimed she wanted from him. "Intimate trivia. It's the stuff all artists want."
Sheeana did not know what she asked. All of those living encounters had created new meanings. Patterns within patterns. Minuscule things gained a poignancy he despaired of sharing with anyone ... even with Murbella.
The touch of a hand on my arm. A child's laughing face. The glitter in an attacker's eyes.
Mundane things without counting. A familiar voice saying: "I just want to put my feet up and collapse tonight. Don't ask me to move."
All had become part of him. They were bound into his character. Living had cemented them inextricably and he could not explain it to anyone.
Murbella spoke without looking at him. "There were many women in those lives of yours."
"I've never counted them."
"Did you love them?"
"They're dead, Murbella. All I can promise is that there are no jealous ghosts in my past."
Murbella extinguished the glowglobes. He closed his eyes and felt darkness close in as she crept into his arms. He held her tightly, knowing she needed it, but his mind rolled of its own volition.
An old memory produced a Mentat teacher's saying: "The greatest relevancy can become irrelevant in the space of a heartbeat. Mentats should look upon such moments with joy. "
He felt no joy.
All of those serial lives continued within him in defiance of Mentat relevancies. A Mentat came at his universe fresh in each instant. Nothing old, nothing new, nothing set in ancient adhesives, nothing truly known. You were the net and you existed only to examine the catch.
What did not go through? How fine a mesh did I use on this lot?
That was the Mentat view. But there was no way the Tleilaxu could have included all of those ghola-Idaho cells to recreate him. There had to be gaps in their serial collection of his cells. He had identified many of those gaps.
But no gaps in my memory. I remember them all.
He was a network linked outside of Time. That is how I can see the people of that vision ... the net. It was the only explanation Mentat awareness could provide and if the Sisterhood guessed, they would be terrified. No matter how many times he denied it, they would say: "Another Kwisatz Haderach! Kill him!"
So work for yourself, Mentat!
He knew he had most of the mosaic pieces but still they did not go together in that Ahh, hah! assembly of questions Mentats prized.
A game where one of the pieces can't be moved.
Excuses for extraordinary behavior.
"They want our willing participation in their dream.
Test the limits!
Humans can balance on strange surfaces.
Get in tune. Don't think. Do it.
The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don't fit.
--Darwi Odrade
As they traveled south toward the desert in the early afternoon, Odrade found the countryside disturbingly changed from her previous inspection three months earlier. She felt vindicated in having chosen ground vehicles. Views framed by the thick plaz protecting them from the dust revealed more details at this level.
Much drier.
