Chapterhouse: Dune
Chapter Seventeen

"Who never learned it?"
Head down, abashed. "I never learned it."
"Murbella's on the practice floor. Run along. But let me tell her about Bellonda."
Schooling in a Bene Gesserit environment never stopped, Idaho thought as he watched the boy leave. But Murbella was right when she said they were learning things available only from the Sisters.
This thought stirred misgivings. He saw an image in memory: Scytale standing behind the field barrier in a corridor. What was their fellow prisoner learning? Idaho shuddered. Thinking of the Tleilaxu always called up memories of Face Dancers. And that recalled Face Dancer ability to "reprint" the memories of anyone they killed. This in its turn filled him with fears of his visions. Face Dancers?
And I am a Tleilaxu experiment.
This was not something he dared explore with a Reverend Mother or even within the sight or hearing of one.
He went out in the corridors then and into Murbella's quarters, where he settled himself in a chair and examined the residue of a lesson she had studied. Voice. There was the clairtone she used to echo her vocal experiments. The breathing harness to force prana-bindu responses lay across a chair, carelessly discarded in a tangle. She had bad habits from Honored Matre days.
Murbella found him there when she returned. She wore skin-tight white leotards blotched with perspiration and was in a hurry to remove this clothing and make herself comfortable. He stopped her on her way to the shower, using one of the tricks he had learned.
"I've discovered some things about the Sisterhood that we didn't know before."
"Tell me!" It was his Murbella demanding this, perspiration glistening on her oval face, green eyes admiring. My Duncan saw through them again!
"A game where one of the pieces cannot be moved," he reminded her. Let the comeye watchdogs play with that one! "They not only expect me to help them create a new religion around Sheeana, our willing participation in their dream, I'm supposed to be their gadfly, their conscience, making them question their own excuses for extraordinary behavior."
"Has Odrade been here?"
"Bellonda."
"Duncan! That one is dangerous. You should never see her alone."
"The boy was with me."
"He never said!"
"He obeys orders."
"All right! What happened?"
He gave her a brief account, even to describing Bellonda's facial expressions and other reactions. (And wouldn't the comeye watchers have great sport with that!) Murbella was enraged. "If she harms you I will never again cooperate with any of them!"
Right on cue, my darling. Consequences! You Bene Gesserit witches should re-examine your behavior with great care.
"I'm still stinking from the practice floor," she said. "That boy. He is a quick one. I've never seen a child that bright."
He stood. "Here, I'll scrub you."
In the shower, he helped her out of the sweaty leotards, his hands cool on her skin. He could see how much she enjoyed his touch.
"So gentle and yet so strong," she whispered.
Gods below! The way she looked at him, as though she could devour him.
For once, Murbella's thoughts of Idaho were free of self-accusation. I remember no moment when I awakened and said: "I love him!" No, it had wormed its way into this deeper and deeper addiction until, accomplished fact, it must be accepted in every living moment. Like breathing... or heartbeats. A flaw? The Sisterhood is wrong!
"Wash my back," she said and laughed when the shower drenched his clothing. She helped him undress and there in the shower it happened once more: this uncontrollable compulsion, this male-female mingling that drove away everything except sensation. Only afterward could she remember and say to herself: He knows every technique I do. But it was more than technique. He wants to please me! Dear Gods of Dur! How was I ever this fortunate?
She clung to his neck while he carried her out of the shower and dropped her still wet onto her bed. She pulled him down beside her and they lay there quietly, letting their energies rebuild.
Presently, she whispered: "So the Missionaria will use Sheeana."
"Very dangerous."
"Puts the Sisterhood in an exposed position. I thought they always tried to avoid that."
"From my point of view, it's ludicrous."
"Because they intended you to control Sheeana?"
"No one can control her! Perhaps no one should." He looked up at the comeyes. "Hey, Bell! You have more than one tiger by the tail."
Bellonda, returning to Archives, stopped at the door of Comeye-Recording and looked a question at the Watch Mother.
"In the shower again," the Watch Mother said. "It gets boring after a while."
"Participation Mystique!" Bellonda said and strode off to her quarters, her mind roiling with changed perceptions that needed reorganizing. He's a better Mentat than I am!
I'm jealous of Sheeana, damn her! And he knows it!
Participation Mystique! The orgy as energizer. Honored Matre sexual knowledge was having an effect on the Bene Gesserit akin to that primitive submersion in shared ecstasy. We take one step toward it and one step away.
Just knowing this thing exists! How repellent, how dangerous... and yet, how magnetic.
And Sheeana is immune! Damn her! Why did Idaho have to remind them of that just now?
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
- Darwi Odrade
Tamalane appeared in Odrade's quarters at Eldio just before dawn, bringing news about the glazeway ahead of them.
"Drifting sand has made the road dangerous or impassable in six places beyond the sea. Very large dunes."
Odrade had just completed her daily regimen: mini-Agony of spice followed by exercise and cold shower. Eldio's guest sleeping cell had only one slingchair (they knew her preferences) and she had seated herself to await Streggi and the morning report.
Tamalane's face appeared sallow in the light of two silvery glowglobes but there was no mistaking her satisfaction. If you had listened to me in the first place!
"Get us 'thopters," Odrade said.
Tamalane left, obviously disappointed at Mother Superior's mild reaction.
Odrade summoned Streggi. "Check alternate roads. Find out about passage around the sea's western end."
Streggi hurried away, almost colliding with Tamalane who was returning.
"I regret to inform you that Transport cannot give us enough 'thopters immediately. They are relocating five communities east of us. We probably can have them by noon."
"Isn't there an observation terminal at the edge of that desert spur south of us?" Odrade asked.
"The first obstruction is just beyond it." Tamalane still was too pleased with herself.
"Have the 'thopters meet us there," Odrade said. "We will leave immediately after breakfast."
"But Dar..."
"Tell Clairby you are riding with me today. Yes, Streggi?" The acolyte stood in the doorway behind Tamalane.
The set of her shoulders as she left said Tamalane did not take the new seating arrangements as forgiveness. On the coals! But Tam's behavior fitted itself to their need.
"We can get to the observation terminal," Streggi said, indicating she had heard. "We'll stir up dust and sand but it's safe."
"Let's hurry breakfast."
The closer they came to the desert, the more barren the country, and Odrade commented on this as they sped south.
Within one hundred klicks of the last reported desert fringe, they saw signs of communities uprooted and removed to colder latitudes. Bare foundations, unsalvageable walls damaged in dismantling and left behind. Pipes cut off at foundation level. Too expensive to dig them out. Sand would cover all of this unsightly mess before long.
They had no Shield Wall here as there had been on Dune, Odrade observed to Streggi. Someday soon, the population of Chapterhouse would remove itself to polar regions and mine the ice for water.
"Is it true, Mother Superior," someone in back with Tamalane asked, "that we're already making spice-harvesting equipment?"
Odrade turned in her seat. The question had come from a Communications clerk, senior acolyte: an older woman with responsibility wrinkles deep in her forehead; dark and squinty from long hours at her equipment.
"We must be ready for the worms," Odrade said.
"If they come," Tamalane said.
"Have you ever walked on the desert, Tam?" Odrade asked.
"I was on Dune." Very short answer.
"But did you go out into open desert?"
"Only to some small drifts near Keen."
"That is not the same." A short answer deserved an equally short rejoinder.
"Other Memory tells me what I need to know." That was for the acolytes.
"It's not the same, Tam. You have to do it yourself. A very curious sensation on Dune, knowing a worm could come at any instant and consume you."
"I've heard about your Dune... exploit."
Exploit. Not "experience." Exploit. Very precise with her censure. Quite like Tam. "Too much of Bell has rubbed off on her," some will say.
"Walking on that sort of desert changes you, Tam. Other Memory becomes clearer. It's one thing to tap experiences of a Fremen ancestor. It's quite different walking there as a Fremen yourself, if only for a few hours."
"I did not enjoy it."
So much for Tam's venturesome spirit, and everyone in the car had seen her in a bad light. Word would spread.
On the coals, indeed!
But now the shift to Sheeana on the Council (if she suits) would have an easier explanation.
The observation terminal was a fused expanse of silica, green and glassy with heat bubbles through it. Odrade stood at the fused edge and noted how grass below her ended in patches, sand already invading the lower slopes of this once verdant hill. There were new saltbushes (planted by Sheeana's people, one of Odrade's entourage said) forming a random gray screen along the encroaching fingers of desert. A silent war. Chlorophyll-based life fighting a rear-guard action against the sand.
A low dune lifted above the terminal to her right. Waving for the others not to follow, she climbed the sandhill, and just beyond its concealing bulk, there was the desert of memory.
So this is what we are creating.
No signs of habitation. She did not look back at growing things making their last desperate struggle against invading dunes but kept her attention focused outward to the horizon. There was the boundary desert dwellers watched. Anything moving in that dry expanse was potentially dangerous.
When she returned to the others, she kept her gaze for a time on the glazed surface of the terminal.
The older Communications acolyte came up to Odrade with a request from Weather.
Odrade scanned it. Concise and inescapable. Nothing sudden about the changes spelled out in these words. They were asking for more ground equipment. This did not come with the abruptness of an accidental storm but with Mother Superior's decision.
Yesterday? Did I decide to phase out the sea only yesterday?
She returned the report to the Communications acolyte and looked beyond her at the sand-marked glaze.
"Request approved." Then: "It saddens me to see all of those buildings gone back there."
The acolyte shrugged. She shrugged! Odrade felt like striking her. (And wouldn't that send upsets rumbling through the Sisterhood!) Odrade turned her back on the woman.
What could I possibly say to her? We have been on this ground five times the lifetime of our oldest sisters. And this one shrugs.
Yet... by some standards, she knew the Sisterhood's installations had barely reached maturity. Plaz and plasteel tended to maintain an orderly relationship between buildings and their settings. Fixed in land and memory. Towns and cities did not submit easily to other forces... except to human whims.
Another natural force.
The concept of respect for age was an odd one, she decided. Humans carried it inborn. She had seen it in the old Bashar when he spoke of his family holdings on Lernaeus.
"We thought it fitting to keep my mother's decor."
Continuity. Would a revived ghola revive those feelings as well?
This is where my kind have been.
That took on a peculiar patina when "my kind" were blood-related ancestors.
Look how long we Atreides persisted on Caladan, restoring the old castle, polishing deep carvings in ancient wood. Whole teams of retainers just to keep the creaking old place at a level of barely tolerable functionalism.
But those retainers had not thought themselves ill used. There had been a sense of privilege in their labors. Hands that polished the wood almost caressed it.
"Old. Been with the Atreides a long time now."
People and their artifacts. She felt tool sense as a living part of herself.
"I'm better because of this stick in my hand... because of this fire-sharpened spear to kill my meat... because of this shelter against the cold... because of my stone cellar to store our winter food... because of this swift sailing vessel... this giant ocean liner... this ship of metal and ceramics that carries me into space..."
Those first human venturers into space - how little they suspected of where the voyage would extend. How isolated they were in those ancient times! Little capsules of livable atmosphere linked to cumbersome data sources by primitive transmission systems. Solitude. Loneliness. Limited opportunity for anything but surviving. Keep the air washed. Be sure of potable water. Exercise to prevent the debilitation of weightlessness. Stay active. Healthy mind in a healthy body. What was a healthy mind, anyway?
"Mother Superior?"
That damned Communications acolyte again!
"Yes?"
"Bellonda says to tell you immediately there has been a messenger from Buzzell. Strangers came and took all of the Reverend Mothers away."
Odrade whirled. "Her entire message?"
"No, Mother Superior. The strangers are described as commanded by a woman. The messenger says she had the look of an Honored Matre but was not wearing one of their robes."
"Nothing from Dortujla or the others?"
"They were not given the opportunity, Mother Superior. The messenger is a First-Stage acolyte. She came in the small no-ship following explicit orders from Dortujla."
"Tell Bell that acolyte must not be allowed to leave. She has dangerous information. I will brief a messenger when I return. It must be a Reverend Mother. Do you have that?"
"Of course, Mother Superior." Hurt at the suggestion of doubt.
It was happening! Odrade contained her excitement with difficulty.
They have taken the bait. Now... are they on the hook?
Dortujla did a dangerous thing depending on an acolyte that way. Knowing Dortujla, that must be an extremely reliable acolyte. Prepared to kill herself if captured. I must see this acolyte. She may be ready for the Agony. And perhaps that's a message Dortujla sends me. It would be like her.
Bell would be incensed, of course. Foolish to depend on someone from a punishment station!
Odrade summoned a Communications team. "Set up a link with Bellonda."
The portable projector was not as clear as a fixed installation but Bell and her setting were recognizable.
Sitting at my table as though she owned it. Excellent!
Not giving Bellonda time for one of her outbursts, Odrade said: "Determine if that messenger acolyte is ready for the Agony."
"She is." Gods below! That was terse for Bell.
"Then see to it. Perhaps she can be our messenger."
"Already have."
"Is she resourceful?"
"Very. "
What in the name of all the devils has happened to Bell? She's acting extremely odd. Not like her usual self at all. Duncan!
"Oh, and Bell, I want Duncan to have an open link with Archives."
"Did that this morning."
Well, well. Contact with Duncan is having its effect.
"I'll talk to you after I've seen Sheeana."
"Tell Tam she was right."
"About what?"
"Just tell her."
"Very well. I must say, Bell, I couldn't be more satisfied with the way you're handling matters."
"After the way you've handled me, how could I fail?"
Bellonda was actually smiling as they broke the connection. Odrade turned to find Tamalane standing behind her.
"Right about what, Tam?"
"That there's more to contacts between Idaho and Sheeana than we've suspected." Tamalane moved close to Odrade and lowered her voice. "Don't put her in my chair without discovering what they keep secret."
"I'm aware you knew my intentions, Tam. But... am I that transparent?"
"In some things, Dar."
"I'm fortunate to have you as a friend."
"You have other supporters. When the Proctors voted, it was your creativity that worked for you. 'Inspired' is the way one of' your defenders put it."
"Then you know I'll have Sheeana on the coals quite thoroughly before I make one of my inspired decisions."
"Of course."
Odrade signaled Communications to remove the projector and went to wait at the edge of the glassy area.
Creative imagination.
She knew the mixed feelings of her associates.
Creativity!
Always dangerous to entrenched power. Always coming up with something new. New things could destroy the grip of authority. Even the Bene Gesserit approached creativity with misgivings. Maintaining an even keel inspired some to shunt boat-rockers aside. That was an element behind Dortujla's posting. The trouble was that creative ones tended to welcome backwaters. They called it privacy. It had taken quite a force to bring Dortujla out.
Be well, Dortujla. Be the best bait we ever used.
The 'thopters came then - sixteen of them, pilots showing displeasure at this added assignment after all the trouble they had been through. Moving whole communities!
In a fragile mood, Odrade watched the 'thopters settle to the hard-glazed surface, wing fans folding back into pod sleeves - each craft like a sleeping insect.
An insect designed in its own likeness by a mad robot.
When they were airborne, Streggi once more seated beside Odrade, Streggi asked: "Will we see sandworms?"
"Possibly. But there are no reports of them yet."
Streggi sat back, disappointed by the answer but unable to lever it into another question. Truth could be upsetting at times and they had such high expectations invested in this evolutionary gamble, Odrade thought.
Else why destroy everything we loved on Chapterhouse?
Simulflow intruded with an image of a long-ago sign arching over a narrow entry to a pink brick building: HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLE DISEASES.
Was that where the Sisterhood found itself? Or was it that they tolerated too many failures? Intrusive Other Memory had to have its purpose.
Failures?
Odrade searched it out: If it comes, we must think of Murbella as a Sister. Not that their captive Honored Matre was an incurable failure. But she was a misfit and undergoing the deep training at a very late age.
How quiet they were all around her, everyone looking out at windswept sand - whaleback dunes giving way at times to dry wavelets. Early afternoon sun had just begun to provide sufficient sidelighting to define near vistas. Dust obscured the horizon ahead.
Odrade curled up in her seat and slept. I've seen this before. I survived Dune.
The stir as they came down and circled over Sheeana's Desert Watch Center awakened her.
Desert Watch Center. We're at it again. We haven't really named it... no more than we gave a name to this planet. Chapterhouse! What kind of a name is that? Desert Watch Center! Description, not a name. Accent on the temporary.
As they descended, she saw confirmations of her thought. The sense of temporary housing was amplified by spartan abruptness in all junctures. No softness, no rounding of any connection. This attaches here and that goes over there. All joined by removable connectors.
It was a bumpy landing, the pilot telling them that way: "Here you are and good riddance."
Odrade went immediately to the room always set aside for her and summoned Sheeana. Temporary quarters: another spartan cubicle with hard cot. Two chairs this time. A window looked westward onto desert. The temporary nature of these rooms grated on her. Anything here could be dismantled in hours and carted away. She washed her face in the adjoining bathroom, getting the most out of movement. She had slept in a cramped position on the 'thopter and her body complained.
Refreshed, she went out to a window, thankful that the erection crew had included this tower: ten floors, and this the ninth. Sheeana occupied the top floor, a vantage for doing what the name of the place described.
While waiting, Odrade made necessary preparations.
Open the mind. Shed preconceptions.
First impressions when Sheeana arrived must be seen with naive eyes. Ears must not be prepared for a particular voice. Nose must not expect remembered odors.
I chose this one. I, her first teacher, am susceptible to mistakes.
Odrade turned at a sound from the doorway. Streggi.
"Sheeana has just returned from the desert and is with her people. She asks Mother Superior to meet her in the upper quarters, which are more comfortable."
Odrade nodded.
Sheeana's quarters on the top floor still had that prefab look at the edges. Quick shelter ahead of the desert. A large room, six or seven times the size of the guest cubicle, but then it was both workroom and sleeping chamber. Windows on two sides - west and north. Odrade was struck by the mixture of functional and nonfunctional.
Sheeana had managed to make her rooms reflect herself. A standard Bene Gesserit cot had been covered with a bright orange and umber spread. A black-on-white line drawing of a sandworm, head-on with all of its crystal teeth displayed, filled an end wall. Sheeana had drawn it, relying on Other Memory and her Dune childhood to guide her hand.
It said something about Sheeana that she had not attempted a more ambitious rendering - full color, perhaps, and in traditional desert setting. Just the worm and a hint of sand beneath it, a tiny robed human in the foreground.
Herself?
Admirable restraint and a constant reminder of why she was here. A deep impression of nature.
Nature makes no bad art?
It was a statement too glib to accept.
What do we mean by "nature?"
She had seen atrocious natural wilderness: brittle trees looking as though they had been dipped in faulty green pigment and left on a tundra's edge to dry into ugly parodies. Repellent. Hard to imagine such trees having any purpose. And blindworms... slimy yellow skins. Where was the art in them? Temporary stopping place on evolution's journey elsewhere. Did the intervention of humans always make a difference? Sligs! The Bene Tleilax had produced something disgusting there.
Admiring Sheeana's drawing, Odrade decided certain combinations offended particular human senses. Sligs as food were delectable. Ugly combinations touched early experiences. Experiences judged.
Bad thing!
Much of what we think of as ART caters to desires for reassurance. Don't offend me! I know what I can accept.
How did this drawing reassure Sheeana?
Sandworm: blind power guarding hidden riches. Artistry in mystic beauty.
It was reported that Sheeana joked about her assignment. " I am shepherd to worms that may never exist."
And even if they did appear, it would be years before any achieved the size indicated by her drawing. Was it her voice from the tiny figure in front of the worm?
"This will come in time."
An odor of melange pervaded the room, stronger than usual in a Reverend Mother's quarters. Odrade passed a searching look across the furnishings: chairs, worktable, illumination from anchored glowglobes - everything placed where it would serve to advantage. But what was that oddly shaped mound of black plaz in the corner? More of Sheeana's work?
These rooms fitted Sheeana, Odrade decided. Little other than the drawing to recall her origins but the view out any window might have been from Dar-es-Balat deep in Dune's drylands.
A small rustling sound at the doorway alerted Odrade. She turned and there was Sheeana. Almost shy the way she peered around the door before entering Mother Superior's presence.
Motion as words: "So she did come to my rooms. Good. Someone might have been careless with my invitation."
Odrade's readied senses tingled with Sheeana's presence. The youngest-ever Reverend Mother. You often thought of Quiet Little Sheeana. She was not always quiet nor was she small but the label stuck. She was not even mousy, but frequently quiet like a rodent waiting at the edge of a field for the farmer to leave. Then the mouse would come darting out to glean fallen grains.
Sheeana came fully into the room and stopped less than a pace from Odrade. "We've been too long apart, Mother Superior."
Odrade's first impression was oddly jumbled.
Candor and concealment?
Sheeana stood quietly receptive.
This descendant of Siona Atreides had developed an interesting face under the Bene Gesserit patina. Maturity working on her according to both Sisterhood and Atreides designs. Marks of many decisions firmly taken. The slender, dark-skinned waif with sun-streaked brown hair had become this poised Reverend Mother. Skin still dark from long hours in the open. Hair still sun-streaked. The eyes, though - the steely total blue that said: "I have been through the Agony."
What is it I sense in her?