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"This body's too small to carry the load."
"But you ..."
"I used it up in just one burst and I'm starving."
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nbsp; Odrade glanced at Idaho. He nodded. Truth.
She motioned the Proctors back from the hatch. They hesitated before obeying. What had Bell told them?
Teg was not through. "Do I have it right, daughter? Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, formation of that self demands the utmost care and attention?"
That damned mother of his taught him everything!
"I apologize, Miles. We did not know how your mother prepared you."
"Whose idea was it?" He looked at Sheeana as he spoke.
"My idea, Miles," Idaho said.
"Oh, you're there, too?" More memory trickled back.
"And I recall the pain you caused me when you restored my memories," Idaho said.
That sobered him. "Point taken, Duncan. No apology needed." He looked at the speakers relaying their voices. "How's the air at the top, Dar? Rarefied enough for you?"
Damned silly idea! she thought. And he knows it. Not rarefied at all. The air was thick with the breathing of those around her, including ones wanting to share her dramatic presence, ones with ideas (sometimes the idea they would be better at her job), ones with offering hands and demanding hands. Rarefied, indeed! She sensed that Teg was trying to tell her something. What?
"Sometimes I must be the autocrat!"
She heard herself saying this to him during one of their orchard walks, explaining "autocrat" to him and adding: "I have the power and must use it. That drags on me terribly."
You have the power, so use it! That was what this Mentat Bashar was telling her. Kill me or release me, Dar.
Still, she stalled for time and knew he would sense it. "Miles, Burzmali's dead, but he kept a reserve force here he trained himself. The best of--"
"Don't bother me with petty details!" What a voice of command! Thin and reedy but all other essentials there.
Without being told, the Proctors returned to the hatch. Odrade waved them away with an angry gesture. Only then did she realize that she had reached a decision.
"Give him back his clothes and bring him out," she said. "Get Streggi in here."
Teg's first words on emerging alarmed Odrade and made her wonder if she had made a mistake.
"What if I will not do battle the way you want?"
"But you said ..."
"I've said many things in my ... lives. Battle doesn't reinforce moral sense, Dar."
She (and Taraza) had heard the Bashar on that subject more than once. "Warfare leaves a residue of 'eat drink and be merry' that often leads inexorably to moral breakdown."
Correct but she did not know what he had in mind with his reminder. "For every veteran who returns with a new sense of destiny ('I survived; that must be God's purpose') more come home with barely submerged bitterness, ready to take 'the easy way' because they saw so much of it in the stresses of war."
They were Teg's words but her belief.
Streggi hurried into the room but before she could speak, Odrade motioned her to stand aside and wait silently.
For once, the acolyte had the courage to disobey Mother Superior.
"Duncan should know he has another daughter. Mother and child live and are healthy." She looked at Teg. "Hello, Miles." Only then did Streggi remove herself to the rear wall and stand quietly.
She is better than I hoped, Odrade thought.
Idaho relaxed into his chair, feeling now the tensions of worry that had interfered with his appreciation of what he had observed here.
Teg nodded to Streggi but spoke to Odrade: "Any more words to whisper in God's ear?" It was essential to control their attention and count on Odrade recognizing it. "If not, I'm really famished."
Odrade raised a finger to signal Streggi and heard the acolyte leave.
She sensed where Teg was directing her attention and, sure enough, he said: "Perhaps you've really created a scar this time."
A barb directed at the Sisterhood's boast that "We don't let scars accumulate on our pasts. Scars often conceal more than they reveal."
"Some scars reveal more than they conceal," he said. He looked at Idaho. "Right, Duncan?" One Mentat to another.
"I believe I've come in on an old argument," Idaho said.
Teg looked at Odrade. "See, daughter? A Mentat knows old argument when he hears it. You pride yourselves on knowing what's required of you at every turn, but the monster at this turning is one of your own making!"
"Mother Superior!" That was a Proctor who did not want her addressed thus.
Odrade ignored her. She felt chagrin, harsh and compelling. Taraza Within remembered the dispute: "We are shaped by Bene Gesserit associations. In peculiar ways, they blunt us. Oh, we cut swift and deep when we must, but that's another kind of blunting. "
"I'll not take part in blunting you," Teg said. So he remembered.
Streggi returned with a bowl of stew, brown broth with meat floating in it. Teg sat on the floor and spooned it into his mouth with urgent motions.
Odrade remained silent, her thoughts moving where Teg had sent them. There was a hard shell Reverend Mothers put around themselves against which all things from outside (including emotions) played like projections. Murbella was right and the Sisterhood had to relearn emotions. If they were only observers, they were doomed.
She addressed Teg. "You won't be asked to blunt us."
Both Teg and Idaho heard something else in her voice. Teg put aside his empty bowl but Idaho was first to speak. "Cultivated," he said.
Teg agreed. Sisters were seldom impulsive. You got ordered reactions from them even in times of peril. They went beyond what most people thought of as cultivated. They were driven not so much by dreams of power as by their own long view, a thing compounded by immediacy and almost unlimited memory. So Odrade was following a carefully thought out plan. Teg glanced at the watchful Proctors.
"You were prepared to kill me," he said.
No one answered. There was no need. They all recognized Mentat Projection.
Teg turned and looked back into the room where he had regained his memories. Sheeana was gone. More memories whispered at the edge of awareness. They would speak in their own time. This diminutive body. That was difficult. And Streggi ... He focused on Odrade. "You were more clever than you thought. But my mother ..."
"I don't think she anticipated this," Odrade said.
"No ... she was not that much Atreides."
An electrifying word in these circumstances, it charged a special silence in the room. The Proctors moved closer.
That mother of his!
Teg ignored the hovering Proctors. "In answer to the questions you have not asked, I cannot explain what happened to me on Gammu. My physical and mental speed defies explanation. Given the size and energy, in one of your heartbeats I could be clear of this room and well or my way out of the ship. Ohhh ..." hand upraised. "I'm still your obedient dog. I'll do what you require, but perhaps not in the way you imagine."
Odrade saw consternation in the faces of her Sisters. What have I loosed upon us?
"We can prevent any living thing from leaving this ship," she said. "You may be fast but I doubt you are faster than the fire that would engulf you should you try to leave without our permission."
"I will leave in my own good time and with your permission. How many of Burzmali's special troops do you have?"
"Almost two million." Startled out of her.
"So many!"
"He had more than twice that number with him at Lampadas when Honored Matres obliterated them."
"We shall have to be more clever than poor Burzmali. Would you leave me to discuss this with Duncan? That is why you keep us around, isn't it? Our specialty?" He aimed a smiling look at the overhead comeyes. "I'm sure you'll review our discussion thoroughly before approving."
Odrade and her Sisters exchanged glances. They shared an unspoken question: What else can we do?
As she stood, Odrade looked at Idaho. "Here's a real job for a Truthsayer-Mentat!"
When the women were gone, Teg pulled hims
elf up onto one of the chairs and looked into the empty room visible beyond the seewall. It had been close there and he still felt his heart pumping hard from the effort. "Quite a show," he said.
"I've seen better." Extremely dry.
"What I'd like right now is a large glass of Marinete, but I doubt this body could take it. "
"Bell will be waiting for Dar when she gets back to Central," Idaho said.
"To the nethermost hell with Bell! We have to defuse those Honored Matres before they find us."
"And our Bashar has just the plan."
"Damn that title!"
Idaho inhaled a sharp breath restricted by shock.
