Heretics of Dune Page 15

  --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."

  Again, he forced her to stop.

  "I think you know who my mother was," she said. She held up a hand for silence as he started to respond. "Names are not necessary."

  Teg studied Odrade's features, seeing the recognizable signs there. Mother and daughter were matched. But what of Lucilla?

  As though she heard his question, Odrade said: "Lucilla is from a parallel breeding line. Quite remarkable, isn't it, what careful breed-matching can achieve?"

  Teg cleared his throat. He felt no emotional attachment to this newly revealed daughter. Her words and other important signals of her performance demanded his primary attention.

  "This is no casual conversation," he said. "Is this all of what you were to reveal to me? I thought the Mother Superior said... "

  "There is more," Odrade agreed. "The Manifesto--I am its author. I wrote it at Taraza's orders and following her detailed instructions."

  Teg glanced around the large chamber as though to make sure no one overheard. He spoke in a lowered voice: "The Tleilaxu are spreading it far and wide!"

  "Just as we hoped."

  "Why are you telling me this? Taraza said you were to prepare me for... "

  "There will come a time when you must know our purpose. It is Taraza's wish that you make your own decisions then, that you really become a free agent."

  Even as she spoke, Odrade saw the Mentat glaze in his eyes.

  Teg breathed deeply. Dependencies and key logs! He felt the Mentat sense of an enormous pattern just beyond the reach of his accumulated data. He did not even consider for an instant that some form of filial devotion had prompted these revelations. There was a fundamentalist, dogmatic, and ritualistic essence apparent in all Bene Gesserit training despite every effort to prevent this. Odrade, this daughter out of his past, was a full Reverend Mother with extraordinary powers of muscle and nerve control--full memories on the female side! She was one of the special ones! She knew tricks of violence that few humans ever suspected. Still, that similarity, that essence remained and a Mentat always saw it.

  What does she want?

  Affirmation of his paternity? She already had all of the confirmation she could need.

  Observing her now, the way she waited so patiently for his thoughts to resolve, Teg reflected that it often was said with truth that Reverend Mothers no longer were completely members of the human race. They moved somehow outside the main flow, perhaps parallel to it, perhaps diving into it occasionally for their own purposes, but always removed from humankind. They removed themselves. It was an identifying mark of the Reverend Mother, a sense of extra identity that made them closer to the long-dead Tyrant than to the human stock from which they sprang.

  Manipulation. That was their mark. They manipulated everyone and everything.

  "I am to be the Bene Gesserit eyes," Teg said. "Taraza wants me to make a human decision for all of you."

  Obviously pleased, Odrade squeezed his arm. "What a father I have!"

  "Do you really have a father?" he asked and he recounted for her what he had been thinking about the Bene Gesserit removing themselves from humanity.

  "Outside humanity," she said. "What a curious idea. Are Guild navigators also outside their original humanity?"

  He thought about this. Guild navigators diverged widely from humankind's more common shape. Born in space and living out their lives in tanks of melange gas, they distorted the original form, elongated and repositioned limbs and organs. But a young navigator in estrus and before entering the tank could breed with a norm. It had been demonstrated. They became non-human but not in the way of the Bene Gesserit.

  "Navigators are not your mental kin," he said. "They think human. Guiding a ship through space, even with prescience to find the safe way, has a pattern a human can accept."

  "You don't accept our pattern?"

  "As far as I can, but somewhere in your development you shift outside the original pattern. I think you may perform a conscious act even to appear human. This way you hold my arm right now, as though you really were my daughter."

  "I am your daughter but I'm surprised you think so little of us."

  "Quite the contrary: I stand in awe of you."

  "Of your own daughter?"

  "Of any Reverend Mother."

  "You think I exist only to manipulate lesser creatures?"

  "I think you no longer really feel human. There's a gap in you, something missing, something you've removed. You no longer are one of us."

  "Thank you," Odrade said. "Taraza told me you would not hesitate to answer truthfully, but I knew that for myself."

  "For what have you prepared me?"

  "You will know it when it occurs; that is all I can say... all I am permitted to say."

  Manipulating again! he thought. Damn them!

  Odrade cleared her throat. She appeared about to say something more but she remained silent as she guided Teg around and strolled with him back across the chamber.

  Even though she had known what Teg must say, his words pained her. She wanted to tell him that she was one of those who still felt human, but his judgment of the Sisterhood could not be denied.

  We are taught to reject love. We can simulate it but each of us is capable of cutting it off in an instant.

  There were sounds behind them. They stopped and turned. Lucilla and Taraza emerged from a lift tube speaking idly about their observations of the ghola.

  "You are absolutely right to treat him as one of us," Taraza said.

  Teg heard but made no comment as they awaited the approach of the two women.

  He knows, Odrade thought. He will not ask me about my birthmother. There was no bonding, no real imprint. Yes, he knows.

  Odrade closed her eyes and memory startled her by producing of itself an image of a painting. The thing occupied a space on the wall of Taraza's morning room. Ixian artifice had preserved the painting in the finest hermetically sealed frame behind a cover of invisible plaz. Odrade often stopped in front of the painting, feeling each time that her hand might reach out and actually touch the ancient canvas so cunningly preserved by the Ixians.

  Cottages at Cordeville.

  The artist's name for his work and his own name were preserved on a burnished plate beneath the painting: Vincent Van Gogh.

  The thing dated from a time so ancient that
only rare remnants such as this painting remained to send a physical impression down the ages. She had tried to imagine the journeys that painting had taken, the serial chance that had brought it intact to Taraza's room.

  The Ixians had been at their best in the preservation and restoration. An observer could touch a dark spot on the lower left comer of the frame. Immediately, you were engulfed in the true genius, not only of the artist, but of the Ixian who had restored and preserved the work. His name was there on the frame: Martin Buro. When touched by the human finger, the dot became a sense projector, a benign spin-off of the technology that had produced the Ixian Probe. Buro had restored not only the painting but the painter--Van Gogh's feeling-accompaniment to each brush stroke. All had been captured in the brush strokes, recorded there by human movements.

  Odrade had stood there engrossed through the whole performance so many times she felt she could recreate the painting independently.

  Recalling this experience so near to Teg's accusation, she knew at once why her memory had reproduced the image for her, why that painting still fascinated her. For the brief space of that replay she always felt totally human, aware of the cottages as places where real people dwelled, aware in some complete way of the living chain that had paused there in the person of the mad Vincent Van Gogh, paused to record itself.

  Taraza and Lucilla stopped about two paces from Teg and Odrade. There was a smell of garlic on Taraza's breath.

  "We stopped for a small bite to eat," Taraza said. "Would you like anything?"

  It was exactly the wrong question. Odrade freed her hand from Teg's arm. She turned quickly and wiped her eyes on her cuff. Looking up once more at Teg, she saw surprise on his face. Yes, she thought, those were real tears!

  "I think we've done everything here that we can," Taraza said.

  "It's time you were on your way to Rakis, Dar."

  "Past time," Odrade said.

  Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

  --Chenoeh: "Conversations with Leto II"

  Hedley Tuek, High Priest of the Divided God, had grown increasingly angry with Stiros. Although too old himself ever to hope for the High Priest's bench, Stiros had sons, grandsons, and numerous nephews. Stiros had transferred his personal ambitions to his family. A cynical man, Stiros. He represented a powerful faction in the priesthood, the so-called "scientific community," whose influence was insidious and pervasive. They veered dangerously close to heresy.