Similarities... but never the same. Never again the same.
Imprinter.
He could guess the meaning. A pure Duncan Idaho wildness arose in him. 'Is it my child you want in your womb, Imprinter? I know you're not called mothers for nothing.'
Her voice cold, Lucilla said: 'We'll discuss it another time.'
'Let us discuss it in a congenial place,' Duncan said. 'Perhaps I'll sing you a song. Not as good as old Gurney Halleck would do it but good enough to prepare for a little bedsport.'
'You find this amusing?' she asked.
'Amusing? No, but I am reminded of Gurney. Tell me, Bashar, have you brought him back from the dead, too?'
'Not to my knowledge,' Teg said.
'Ahhhh, there was a singing man!' Duncan said. 'He could be killing you while he sang and never miss a note.'
Her manner still icy, Lucilla said: 'We of the Bene Gesserit have learned to avoid music. It evokes too many confusing emotions. Memory-emotions, of course.'
It was meant to awe him with a reminder of all those Other Memories and the Bene Gesserit powers these implied but Duncan only laughed louder.
'What a shame that is,' he said. 'You miss so much of life.' And he began humming an old Halleck refrain:
'Review friends, troops long past review...'
But his mind whirled elsewhere with the rich new flavor of these reborn moments and once more he felt the eager touch of something powerful that remained buried within him. Whatever it was, it was violent and it concerned Lucilla, the Imprinter. In imagination, he saw her dead and her body awash in blood.
People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape, then people will follow.
- Leadership Secrets of the Bene Gesserit
With a silent Waff about twenty paces ahead of them, Odrade and Sheeana walked down a weed-fringed road beside a spice-storage yard. All of them wore new desert robes and glistening stillsuits. The gray nulplaz fence that defined the yard beside them held bits of grass and cottony seedpods in its meshes. Looking at the seedpods, Odrade thought of them as life trying to break through a human intervention.
Behind them, the blocky buildings that had arisen around Dar-es-Balat baked in the sunlight of early afternoon. Hot dry air burned her throat when she inhaled too quickly. Odrade felt dizzy and at war within herself. Thirst nagged at her. She walked as though balanced on the edge of a precipice. The situation she had created at Taraza's command might explode momentarily.
How fragile it is!
Three forces balanced, not really supporting each other but joined by motives that could shift in an instant and topple the whole alliance. The military people sent by Taraza did not reassure Odrade. Where was Teg? Where was Burzmali? For that matter, where was the ghola? He should be here by now. Why had she been ordered to delay matters?
Today's venture would certainly delay matters! Although it had Taraza's blessing, Odrade thought this excursion into the desert of the worms might be a permanent delay. And there was Waff. If he survived, would there be any pieces for him to pick up?
Despite the healing applications of the Sisterhood's best quicknit amplifiers, Waff said his arms still ached where Odrade had broken them. He was not complaining, merely providing information. He appeared to accept their fragile alliance, even the modifications that incorporated the Rakian priestly cabal. No doubt he was reassured that one of his own Face Dancers occupied the High Priest's bench in the guise of Tuek. Waff spoke forcefully when he demanded his 'breeding mothers' from the Bene Gesserit and, consequently, withheld his part of their bargain.
'Only a small delay while the Sisterhood reviews the new agreement,' Odrade explained. 'Meanwhile...'
Today was 'meanwhile.'
Odrade put aside her misgivings and began to enter the mood of this venture. Waff's behavior fascinated her, especially his reaction on meeting Sheeana: quite plainly fearful and more than a little in awe.
The minion of his Prophet.
Odrade glanced sideways at the girl walking dutifully beside her. There was the real leverage for shaping these events into the Bene Gesserit design.
The Sisterhood's breakthrough into the reality behind Tleilaxu behavior excited Odrade. Waff's fanatic 'true faith' gained shape with each new response from him. She felt fortunate just to be here studying a Tleilaxu Master in a religious setting. The very grit under Waff's feet ignited behavior that she had been trained to identify.
We should have guessed, Odrade thought. The manipulations of our own Missionaria Protectiva should have told us how the Tleilaxu did it: keeping themselves to themselves, blocking off every intrusion for all of those plodding millennia.
They did not appear to have copied the Bene Gesserit structure. And what other force could do such a thing? It was a religion. The Great Belief!
Unless the Tleilaxu are using their ghola system as a kind of immortality.
Taraza could be right. Reincarnated Tleilaxu Masters would not be like Reverend Mothers - no Other Memories, only personal memories. But prolonged!
Fascinating!
Odrade looked ahead at Waff's back. Plodding. It appeared to come naturally to him. She recalled that he called Sheeana 'Alyama.' Another confirming linguistic insight into Waff's Great Belief. It meant 'Blessed One.' The Tleilaxu had kept an ancient language not only alive but unchanged.
Did Waff not know that only powerful forces such as religions did that?
We have the roots of your obsession in our grasp, Waff! It is not unlike some that we have created. We know how to manipulate such things for our own purposes.
Taraza's communication burned in Odrade's awareness: 'The Tleilaxu plan is transparent: Ascendancy. The human universe must be made into a Tleilaxu universe. They could not hope to achieve such a goal without help from the Scattering. Ergo.'
The Mother Superior's reasoning could not be denied. Even the opposition within that deep schism that threatened to shatter the Sisterhood agreed. But the thought of those human masses in the Scattering, their numbers exploding exponentially, produced a lonely sense of desperation in Odrade.
We are so few compared to them.
Sheeana stooped and picked up a pebble. She looked at it a moment and then threw it at the fence beside them. The pebble sailed through the meshes without touching them.
Odrade took a firmer grip on herself. The sounds of their footsteps on the blown sand that drifted across this little-used roadway seemed suddenly over-loud. The spindly causeway leading out over the Dar-es-Balat ring-qanat and moat lay no more than two hundred paces ahead at the end of this narrow road.
Sheeana spoke: 'I am doing this because you ordered it, Mother. But I still don't know why.'
Because this is the crucible where we test Waff and, through him, reshape the Tleilaxu!
'It is a demonstration,' Odrade said.
That was true. It was not the whole truth, but it served.
Sheeana walked head down, gaze intent on where she placed each step. Was this how she always approached her Shaitan? Odrade wondered. Thoughtful and remote?
Odrade heard a faint thwocking sound high up behind her. The watchful ornithopters were arriving. They would keep their distance, but many eyes would observe this demonstration.
'I will dance,' Sheeana said. 'That usually calls a big one.'
Odrade felt her heartbeat quicken. Would the 'big one' continue to obey Sheeana despite the presence of two companions?
