ChapterHouse: Dune

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.

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 ca

"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 sca

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..."