Heretics of Dune

"But you are not my father and Lucilla is not my mother. Imprinter? For what does she hope to prepare me?"

"It may be that she does not know, Duncan. Like me, she may have only part of the design. Knowing how the Sisterhood works, that is highly likely."

"So the two of you just train me and deliver me to Arrakis. Here's the package you ordered!"

"This is a far different universe than the one where you were originally born," Teg said. "As it was in your day, we still have a Great Convention against atomics and the pseudoatomics of lasgun-shield interaction. We still say that sneak attacks are forbidden. There are pieces of paper scattered around to which we have put our names and we -"

"But the no-ships have changed the basis for all of those treaties," Duncan said. "I think I learned my history fairly well at the Keep. Tell me, Bashar, why did Paul's son have the Tleilaxu provide him with my ghola-self, hundreds of me! for all those thousands of years?"

"Paul's son?"

"The Keep's records call him the God Emperor. You name him Tyrant."

"Oh. I don't think we know why he did it. Perhaps he was lonely for someone from -"

"You brought me back to confront the worm!" Duncan said.

Is that what we're doing? Teg wondered. He had considered this possibility more than once, but it was only a possibility, not a projection. Even so, there had to be something more in Taraza's design. Teg sensed this with every fiber of his Mentat training. Did Lucilla know? Teg did not delude himself that he could pry revelation from a full Reverend Mother. No... he would have to bide his time, wait and watch and listen. In his own way, this obviously was what Duncan had decided. It was a dangerous course if he thwarted Lucilla!

Teg shook his head. "Truly, Duncan, I do not know."

"But you follow orders."

"By my oath to the Sisterhood."

"Deceptions, dishonesties - those are empty words when the question is the Sisterhood's survival," Duncan quoted him.

"Yes, I said that," Teg agreed.

"I trust you now because you said it," Duncan said. "But I do not trust Lucilla."

Teg dropped his chin to his breast. Dangerous... dangerous...

Much more slowly than once he had done, Teg brought his attention out of such thoughts and went through the mental cleansing process, concentrating on the necessities laid upon him by Taraza.

"You are my Bashar."

Duncan studied the Bashar for a moment. Fatigue lines were obvious on the old man's face. Duncan was reminded suddenly of Teg's great age, wondering if it ever tempted men such as Teg to seek out the Tleilaxu and become gholas. Probably not. They knew they might become Tleilaxu puppets.

This thought flooded Duncan's awareness, holding him immobile so plainly that Teg, lifting his gaze, saw it at once.

"Is something wrong?"

"The Tleilaxu have done something to me, something that has not yet been exposed," Duncan husked.

"Exactly what we feared!" It was Lucilla speaking from the doorway behind Teg. She advanced to within two paces of Duncan. "I have been listening. You two are very informative."

Teg spoke quickly, hoping to blunt the anger he sensed in her. "He has mastered the seven attitudes today."

"He strikes like fire," Lucilla said, "but remember that we of the Sisterhood flow like water and fill in every place." She glanced down at Teg. "Do you not see that our ghola has gone beyond the attitudes?"

"No fixed position, no attitude," Duncan said.

Teg looked up sharply at Duncan, who stood with his head erect, his forehead smooth, his eyes clear as he returned Teg's gaze. Duncan had grown surprisingly in the short time since being awakened to his original memories.

"Damn you, Miles!" Lucilla muttered.

But Teg kept his attention on Duncan. The youth's entire body seemed wired to a new kind of vigor. There was a poise about him that had not been there before.

Duncan shifted his attention to Lucilla. "You think you will fail in your assignment?"

"Surely not," she said. "You're still a male."

And she thought: Yes, that young body must flow hot with the juices of procreation. Indeed, the hormonal igniters are all intact and susceptible to arousing. His present stance, though, and the way he looked at her, forced her to raise her awareness to new, energy-demanding levels.

"What have the Tleilaxu done to you?" she demanded.

Duncan spoke with a flippancy that he did not feel: "O Great Imprinter, if I knew I would tell you."

"You think it's a game we play?" she demanded.

"I do not know what it is we play at!"

"By now, many people know we are not on Rakis where we would have been expected to flee," she said.

"And Gammu swarms with people returned from the Scattering," Teg said. "They have the numbers to explore many possibilities here."

"Who would suspect the existence of a lost no-globe from the Harko

"Anyone who made the association between Rakis and Dar-es-Balat," Teg said.

"If you think this is a game, consider the urgencies of the play," Lucilla said. She pivoted on one foot to concentrate on Teg. "And you have disobeyed Taraza!"

"You are wrong! I have done exactly what she ordered me to do. I am her Bashar and you forget how well she knows me."

With an abruptness that shocked her to silence, the subtleties of Taraza's maneuverings impressed themselves upon Lucilla...

We are pawns!

What a delicate touch Taraza always demonstrated in the way she moved her pawns about. Lucilla did not feel diminished by the realization that she was a pawn. That was knowledge bred and trained into every Reverend Mother of the Sisterhood. Even Teg knew it. Not diminished, no. The thing around them had escalated in Lucilla's awareness. She felt awed by Teg's words. How shallow had been her previous view of the forces within which they were enmeshed. It was as though she had seen only the surface of a turbulent river and, from that, had glimpsed the currents beneath. Now, however, she felt the flow all around her and a dismaying realization.

Pawns are expendable.

***

By your belief in singularities, in granular absolutes, you deny movement, even the movement of evolution! While you cause a granular universe to persist in your awareness, you are blind to movement. When things change, your absolute universe vanishes, no longer accessible to your self-limiting perceptions. The universe has moved beyond you.

Taraza put her hands beside her temples, palms flat in front of her ears, and pressed inward. Even her fingers could feel the tiredness in there: right between the hands - fatigue. A brief flicker of eyelids and she fell into the relaxation trance. Hands against head were the sole focal points of fleshly awareness.

One hundred heartbeats.

She had practiced this regularly since learning it as a child, one of her first Bene Gesserit skills. Exactly one hundred heartbeats. After all of those years of practice, her body could pace them automatically by an unconscious metronome.

When she opened her eyes at the count of one hundred, her head felt better. She hoped she would have at least two more hours in which to work before fatigue overcame her once more. Those one hundred heartbeats had given her extra years of wakefulness in her lifetime.

Tonight, though, thinking of that old trick sent her memories spiraling backward. She found herself caught in her own childhood, the dormitory with the Sister Proctor pacing the aisle at night to make sure they all remained properly asleep in their beds.

Sister Baram, the Night Proctor.

Taraza had not thought of that name in years. Sister Baram had been short and fat, a failed Reverend Mother. Not for any immediately visible reason, but the Medical Sisters and their Suk doctors had found something. Baram had never been permitted to try the spice agony. She had been quite forthcoming about what she knew of her defect. It had been discovered while she was still in her teens: periodic nerve tremors, which manifested when she began to sink into sleep. A symptom of something deeper that had caused her to be sterilized. The tremors made Baram wakeful in the night. Aisle patrol was a logical assignment.