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Reaching beneath her table, Odrade touched a call field. Her two councillors stood silently waiting. They knew she was about to say something important. One thing a Mother Superior could be sure of--her Sisters listened to her with great care, with an intensity that would have gratified someone more ego-bound than a Reverend Mother.
"Politics," Odrade said.
That snapped them to attention! A loaded word. When you entered Bene Gesserit politics, marshaling your powers for the rise to eminence, you became a prisoner of responsibility. You saddled yourself with duties and decisions that bound you to the lives of those who depended on you. This was what really tied the Sisterhood to their Mother Superior. That one word told councillors and the watchdogs the First-Among-Equals had reached a decision.
They all heard the small scuffling sound of someone arriving outside the workroom door. Odrade touched the white plate in the near right corner of her table. The door behind her opened and Streggi stood there awaiting the Mother Superior's orders.
"Bring him," Odrade said.
"Yes, Mother Superior." Almost emotionless. A very promising acolyte, that Streggi.
She stepped out of sight and returned leading Miles Teg by the hand. The boy's hair was quite blond but streaked with darker lines that said the light coloration would go dark when he matured. His face was narrow, nose just beginning to show that hawkish angularity so characteristic of Atreides males. His blue eyes moved alertly taking in room and occupants with expectant curiosity.
"Wait outside, please, Streggi."
Odrade waited for the door to close.
The boy stood looking at Odrade with no sign of impatience.
"Miles Teg, ghola," Odrade said. "You remember Tamalane and Bellonda, of course."
He favored the two women with a short glance but remained silent, apparently unmoved by the intensity of their inspection.
Tamalane frowned. She had disagreed from the first with calling this child a ghola. Gholas were grown from cells of a cadaver. This was a clone, just as Scytale was a clone.
"I am going to send him into the no-ship with Duncan and Murbella," Odrade said. "Who better than Duncan to restore Miles to his original memories?"
"Poetic justice," Bellonda agreed. She did not speak her objections although Odrade knew they would come out when the boy had gone. Too young!
"What does she mean, poetic justice?" Teg asked. His voice had a piping quality.
"When the Bashar was on Gammu, he restored Duncan's original memories."
"Is it really painful?"
"Duncan found it so."
Some decisions must be ruthless.
Odrade thought that a great barrier to accepting the fact that you could make your own decisions. Something she would not be required to explain to Murbella.
How do I soften the blow?
There were times when you could not soften it; in fact when it was kinder to rip off the bandages in one swift shot of agony.
"Can this ... this Duncan Idaho really give me back my memories from ... before?"
"He can and he will."
"Are we not being too precipitous?" Tamalane asked.
"I've been studying accounts of the Bashar," Teg said. "He was a famous military man and a Mentat."
"And you're proud of that, I suppose?" Bell was taking out her objections on the boy.
"Not especially." He returned her gaze without flinching. "I think of him as someone else. Interesting, though."
"Someone else," Bellonda muttered. She looked at Odrade with ill-concealed disagreement. "You're giving him the deep teaching!"
"As his birth-mother did."
"Will I remember her?" Teg asked.
Odrade gave him a conspiratorial smile, one they had shared often in their orchard walks. "You will."
"Everything?"
"You'll remember all of it--your wife, your children, the battles. Everything."
"Send him away!" Bellonda said.
The boy smiled but looked to Odrade, awaiting her command.
"Very well, Miles," Odrade said. "Tell Streggi to take you to your new quarters in the no-ship. I'll come along later and introduce you to Duncan."
"May I ride on Streggi's shoulders?"
"Ask her."
Impulsively, Teg dashed up to Odrade, lifted himself onto his toes and kissed her cheek. "I hope my real mother was like you."
Odrade patted his shoulder. "Very much like me. Run along now."
When the door closed behind him, Tamalane said: "You haven't told him you're one of his daughters!"
"Not yet."
"Will Idaho tell him?"
"If it's indicated."
Bellonda was not interested in petty details. "What are you planning, Dar?"
Tamalane answered for her. "A punishment force commanded by our Mentat Bashar. It's obvious."
She took the bait!
"Is that it?" Bellonda demanded.
Odrade favored them both with a hard stare. "Teg was the best we ever had. If anyone can punish our enemies ..."
"We'd better start growing another one," Tamalane said.
"I don't like the influence Murbella may have on him," Bellonda said.
"Will Idaho cooperate?" Tamalane asked.
"He will do what an Atreides asks of him."
Odrade spoke with more confidence than she felt but the words opened her mind to another source of the alien feelings.
I'm seeing us as Murbella sees us! I can think like at least one Honored Matre!
We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences--the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.
--Bene Gesserit Panoplia Propheticus
Scytale whistled while he walked down the corridor fronting his quarters, taking his afternoon exercise. Down and back. Whistling.
Get them accustomed to me whistling.
As he whistled, he composed a ditty to go with the sound: "Tleilaxu sperm does not talk." Over and over, the words rolled in his mind. They could not use his cells to bridge the genetic gap and learn his secrets.
They must come to me with gifts.
Odrade had stopped by to see him earlier "on my way to confer with Murbella." She mentioned the captive Honored Matre to him frequently. There was a purpose but he had no idea what it might be. Threat? Always possible. It would be revealed eventually.
"I hope you are not fearful," Odrade had said.
They had been standing at his food slot while he waited for lunch to appear. The menu was never quite to his liking but acceptable. Today, he had asked for seafood. No telling what form it would take.
"Fearful? Of you? Ahhh, dear Mother Superior, I am priceless to you alive. Why should I fear?"
"My Council reserves judgment on your latest requests."
I expected that.
"It's a mistake to hobble me," he said. "Limits your choices. Weakens you."
Those words had taken several days of planning for him to compose. He waited for their effect.
"It depends on how one intends to employ the tool, Master Scytale. Some tools break when you don't use them properly."
Damn you, witch!
He smiled, showing his sharp canines. "Testing to extinction, Mother Superior?"
She made one of her rare sallies into humor. "Do you really expect me to strengthen you? For what do you bargain now, Scytale?"
