'Do you think Lucilla knows?'
'I'm not sure but let me warn you again about her. She has orders to get you to Rakis prepared for what you must do there.'
'Must?' Duncan shook his head from side to side. 'Am I not my own person with rights to make my own choices? What do you think you've reawakened here, a damned Face Dancer capable only of obeying orders?'
'Are you telling me you will not go to Rakis?'
'I'm telling you I will make my own decisions when I know what it is I'm to do. I'm not a hired assassin.'
'You think I am, Duncan?'
'I think you're an honorable man, someone to be admired. Give me credit for having my own standards of duty and honor.'
'You've been given another chance at life and -'
'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 Harkonnen days?' Duncan asked.
'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.
- First Draft, Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives
Taraza put her hands beside her temples, palms flat in front of her ears, and pressed inward. Even her fingers
