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--Analysis of the Tyrant, the Taraza File: BG Archives
Teg's thoughts were in turmoil as he returned to Gammu from the Guildship. He stepped from the lighter at the black-charred edge of the Keep's private landing field and looked around him as though for the first time. Almost noon. So little time had passed and so much had changed.
To what extent would the Bene Gesserit go in imparting an essential lesson? he wondered. Taraza had dislodged him from his familiar Mentat processes. He felt that the whole incident on the Guildship had been staged just for him. He had been shaken from a predictable course. How strange Gammu appeared as he crossed the guarded strip to the entry pits.
Teg had seen many planets, learned their ways and how they printed themselves on their inhabitants. Some planets had a big yellow sun that sat in close and kept living things warm, evolving, growing. Some planets had little shimmer-suns that hung far away in a dark sky, and their light touched very little. Variations existed within and even outside this range. Gammu was a yellow-green variation with a day of 31.27 standard hours and a 2.6 SY. Teg had thought he knew Gammu.
When the Harkonnens were forced to abandon it, colonists left behind by the Scattering came from the Danian group, calling it by the Halleck name given to it in the great remapping. The colonists had been known as Caladanian in those days but millennia tended to shorten some labels.
Teg paused at the entryway to the protective revetments that led from the field down beneath the Keep. Taraza and her party lagged behind him. He saw Taraza was talking intently to Odrade.
Atreides Manifesto, he thought.
Even on Gammu, few admitted to either Harkonnen or Atreides ancestry, although the genotypes were visible here--especially the dominant Atreides: those long, sharp noses, the high foreheads and sensual mouths. Often, the pieces were scattered--the mouth on one face, those piercing eyes on another and countless mixtures. Sometimes, though, one person carried it all and then you saw the pride, that inner knowledge:
"I am one of them!"
Gammu's natives recognized it and gave it walkway room but few labeled it.
Underlying all of this was what the Harkonnens had left behind--genetic lines tracing far away into the dawn times of Greek and Pathan and Mameluke, shadows of ancient history that few outside of professional historians or those trained by the Bene Gesserit could even name.
Taraza and her party caught up with Teg. He heard her say to Odrade: "You must tell Miles all of it."
Very well, she would tell him, he thought. He turned and led the way past the inner guards to the long passage under the pillboxes into the Keep proper.
Damn the Bene Gesserit! he thought. What were they really doing here on Gammu?
Plenty of Bene Gesserit signs could be seen on this planet: the back-breeding to fix selected traits, and here and there a visible emphasis on seductive eyes for women.
Teg returned a guard captain's salute without changing focus. Seductive eyes, yes. He had seen this soon after his arrival at the ghola's Keep and especially during his first inspection tour of the planet. He had seen himself in many faces, too, and recalled the thing old Patrin had mentioned so many times.
"You have the Gammu look, Bashar."
Seductive eyes! That guard captain back there had them. She and Odrade and Lucilla were alike in this. Few people paid much attention to the importance of eyes when it came to seduction, he thought. It took a Bene Gesserit upbringing to make that point. Big breasts in a woman and hard loins in a man (that tightly muscular look to the buttocks)--these were naturally important in sexual matchings. But without the eyes, the rest of it could go for nothing. Eyes were essential. You could drown in the right kind of eyes, he had learned, sink right into them and be unaware of what was being done to you until penis was firmly clasped in vagina.
He had noted Lucilla's eyes immediately after his arrival on Gammu and had walked cautiously. No doubts about how the Sisterhood used her talents!
There was Lucilla now, waiting at the central inspection and decontamination chamber. She gave him the flickering handsign that all was well with the ghola. Teg relaxed and watched as Lucilla and Odrade confronted each other. The two women had remarkably similar features despite the age difference. Their bodies were quite different, though, Lucilla more solid against Odrade's willowy form.
The guard captain of the seductive eyes came up beside Teg and leaned close to him. "Schwangyu has just learned who you brought back with you," she said, nodding toward Taraza. "Ahhh, there she is now."
Schwangyu stepped from a lift tube and crossed to Taraza, giving only an angry glare to Teg.
Taraza wanted to surprise you, he thought. We all know why.
"You don't appear happy to see me," Taraza said, addressing Schwangyu.
"I am surprised, Mother Superior," Schwangyu said. "I had no idea." She glanced once more at Teg, a look of venom in her eyes.
Odrade and Lucilla broke off their mutual examination. "I had heard about it, of course," Odrade said, "but it is a stopper to confront yourself in the face of another person."
"I warned you," Taraza said.
"What are your orders, Mother Superior?" Schwangyu asked. It was as close as she could come to asking the purpose of Taraza's visit.
"I would like a private word with Lucilla," Taraza said.
"I'll have quarters prepared for you," Schwangyu said.
"Don't bother," Taraza said. "I'm not staying. Miles has already arranged for my transport. Duty requires my presence at Chapter House. Lucilla and I will talk outside in the courtyard." Taraza put a finger to her cheek. "Oh, and I'd like to watch the ghola unobserved for a few minutes. I'm sure Lucilla can arrange it."
"He's taking the more intense training quite well," Lucilla said as the two moved off toward a lift tube.
Teg turned his attention to Odrade, noting as his gaze passed across Schwangyu's face the intensity of her anger. She was not trying to conceal it.
Was Lucilla a sister or a daughter of Odrade? Teg wondered. It occurred to him suddenly that there must be a Bene Gesserit purpose behind the resemblance. Yes, of course--Lucilla was an Imprinter!
Schwangyu overcame her anger. She looked with curiosity at Odrade. "I was just about to take lunch, Sister," Schwangyu said. "Would you care to join me?"
"I must have a word alone with the Bashar," Odrade said. "If it is all right, perhaps we could remain here for our talk? I must not be seen by the ghola."
Schwangyu scowled, not trying to hide her upset from Odrade. They knew at Chapter House where loyalties lay! But no one... no one! would remove her from this post of observational command. Opposition had its rights!
Her thoughts were clear even to Teg. He noted the stiffness of Schwangyu's back as she left them.
"It is bad when Sister is turned against Sister," Odrade said.
Teg gave a handsign to his guard captain, ordering her to clear the area. Alone, Odrade said. Alone it would be. To Odrade, he said: "This is one of my areas. No spies or other means of observing us here."
"I thought as much," Odrade said.
"We have a service room over there." Teg nodded to his left. "Furniture, even chairdogs if you prefer."
"I hate it when they try to cuddle me," she said. "Could we talk here?" She put a hand under Teg's arm. "Perhaps we could walk a bit. I got so stiff sitting in that lighter."
"What is it you're supposed to tell me?" he asked as they strolled.
"My memories are no longer selectively filtered," she said. "I have them all, only on the female side, naturally."
"So?" Teg pursed his lips. This was not the overture he had expected. Odrade appeared more like one who would take off on a direct approach.
"Taraza says you have read the Atreides Manifesto. Good. You know it will cause upset in many quarters."
"Schwangyu already has made it the subject of a diatribe against 'you Atreides.'"
Odrade stared at him solemnly. As the reports all said, Teg remained an imposing f
igure, but she had known that without the reports.
"We are both Atreides, you and I," Odrade said.
Teg came to full alert.
"Your mother explained that to you in detail," Odrade said, "when you took your first school leave back to Lernaeus."
Teg stopped and stared down at her. How could she know this? To his knowledge, he had never before met and conversed with this remote Darwi Odrade. Was he the subject of special discussions at Chapter House? He held his silence, forcing her to carry the conversation.
"I will recount a conversation between a man and my birthmother," Odrade said. "They are in bed and the man says: 'I fathered a few children when I first escaped from the close bondage of the Bene Gesserit, back when I thought myself an independent agent, free to enlist and fight anywhere I chose."'
Teg did not try to conceal his surprise. Those were his own words! Mentat memory told him Odrade had them down as accurately as a mechanical recorder. Even the tone!
"More?" she asked as he continued to stare at her. "Very well. The man says: 'That was before they sent me to Mentat training, of course. What an eye-opener that was! I had never been out of the Sisterhood's sight for an instant! I was never a free agent.'"
"Not even when I spoke those words," Teg said.
"True." She urged him by pressure on his arm as they continued their stroll across the chamber. "The children you fathered all belonged to the Bene Gesserit. The Sisterhood takes no chances that our genotype will be sent into the wild gene pool."
"Let my body go to Shaitan, their precious genotype remains in Sisterhood care," he said.
"My care," Odrade said. "I am one of your daughters."
