This was the fearful thing about melange addiction.
She stood at the window of her sleeping chamber waiting for the effect to run its course. Weather Control, she noted, had achieved another morning rain. The landscape was washed clean, everything immersed in a romantic haze, all edges blurred and reduced to essences like old memories. She opened the window. Damp cold air blew across her face, drawing recollections around her the way one put on a familiar garment.
She inhaled deeply. Smells after a rain! She remembered the essentials of life amplified and smoothed by falling water but these rains were different. They left a flinty aftersmell she could taste. Odrade did not like it. The message was not of things washed clean but of life resentful, wanting all rain stopped and locked away. This rain no longer gentled and brought fullness. It carried inescapable awareness of change.
Odrade closed the window. At once, she was back in the familiar odors of her quarters, and that constant smell of shere from the metering implants required of everyone who knew the location of Chapterhouse. She heard Streggi enter, the slip-slip sounds of the desert map being changed.
An efficient sound in Streggi's movements. Weeks of close association had confirmed Odrade's first judgment. Reliable. Not brilliant but supremely sensitive to Mother Superior's needs. Look how quietly she moved. Transfer Streggi's sensitivity to the needs of young Teg and they had his required height and mobility. A horse? Much more.
Odrade's melange assimilation reached its peak and subsided. Streggi's reflection in the window showed her waiting for assignment. She knew these moments were given over to the spice. At her stage, she would be looking forward to the day when she entered this mysterious enhancement.
I wish her well of it.
Most Reverend Mothers followed the teaching and seldom thought of their spice as addiction. Odrade knew it every morning for what it was. You took your spice during the day as your body demanded, following a pattern of early training: dosage minimal, just enough to whet the metabolic system and drive it into peak performance. Biological necessities meshed more smoothly with melange. Food tasted better. Barring accident or fatal assault, you lived much longer than you could without it. But you were addicted.
Her body restored, Odrade blinked and considered Streggi. Curiosity about the morning's long ritual was plain in her. Speaking to Streggi's reflection in the window, Odrade said: 'Have you learned about melange withdrawal?'
'Yes, Mother Superior.'
Despite warnings to keep awareness of addiction low key, it was never more than an eyeblink away from Odrade and she felt the accumulated resentments. Mental preparations as an acolyte (firmly impressed in the Agony) had been eroded by Other Memory and accumulations of time. The admonition: 'Withdrawal removes an essential of your life and, if it occurs in late middle age, can kill you.' How little that meant now.
'Withdrawal has intense meaning for me,' Odrade said. 'I am one of those for whom the morning melange is painful. I'm sure they told you this happens.'
'I'm sorry, Mother Superior.'
Odrade studied the map. It showed a longer finger of desert thrusting northward and a pronounced widening of drylands to the southeast of Central where Sheeana had her station. Presently, Odrade returned her attention to Streggi, who was watching Mother Superior with new interest.
Brought up short by thoughts of the spice's darker side!
'The uniqueness of melange is seldom considered in our age,' Odrade said. 'All of the old narcotics in which humans have indulged possess a remarkable factor in common - all except the spice. They all brought shorter life and pain.'
'We were told, Mother Superior.'
'But you probably were not told that a fact of governance could be obscured by our concern with Honored Matres. There's an energy greed in governments (yes, even in ours) that can dump you into a trap. If you serve me, you will feel it in your guts because every morning you will watch me suffer. Let knowledge of it sink into you, this deadly trap. Don't become uncaring pushers, caught in a system that displaces life with careless death as Honored Matres do. Remember: Acceptable narcotics can be taxed to pay salaries or otherwise create jobs for uncaring functionaries.'
Streggi was puzzled. 'But melange extends our lives, increases health and arouses appetites for -'
She was stopped by Odrade's scowl.
Right out of the Acolyte Manual!
'It has this other side, Streggi, and you see it in me. The Acolyte Manual does not lie. But melange is a narcotic and we are addicted. '
' I know it's not gentle with everyone, Mother Superior. But you said Honored Matres don't use it.'
'The substitute they employ replaces melange with few benefits except to prevent withdrawal agonies and death. It is parallel addictive.'
'And the captive?'
'Murbella used it and now she uses melange. They are interchangeable. Interesting?'
'I... suppose we will learn more of this. I notice, Mother Superior, that you never call them whores.'
'As acolytes do? Ahh, Streggi, Bellonda has been a bad influence. Oh, I recognize the pressures.' As Streggi started to protest. 'Acolytes feel the threat. They look at Chapterhouse and think of it as their fortress for the long night of the whores.'
'Something like that, Mother Superior.' Extremely hesitant.
'Streggi, this planet is only another temporary place. Today we go south and impress that upon you. Find Tamalane, please, and tell her to make the arrangements we discussed for our visit to Sheeana. Speak to no one else about it.'
'Yes, Mother Superior. Do you mean I will accompany you?'
'I want you by my side. Tell the one you are training that she now has full charge of my map.'
As Streggi left, Odrade thought of Sheeana and Idaho. She wants to talk to him and he wants to talk to her.
Comeye analysis noted that these two sometimes conversed by hand-signals while hiding most of the movements with their bodies. It had the look of an old Atreides battle language. Odrade recognized some of it but not enough to determine content. Bellonda wanted an explanation from Sheeana. 'Secrets!' Odrade was more cautious. 'Let it go a bit. Perhaps something interesting will come of it.'
What does Sheeana want?
Whatever Duncan had in mind it concerned Teg. Creating the pain required for Teg to recover his original memories went against Duncan's grain.
Odrade had noted this when she interrupted Duncan at his console yesterday.
'You're late, Dar.' Not looking up from whatever it was he did there. Late? It was early evening.
He had been calling her Dar frequently for several years, a goad, a reminder that he resented his fishtank existence. The goad irritated Bellonda, who argued against 'his damned familiarities.' He called Bellonda 'Bell,' of course. Duncan was generous with his needle.
Remembering this, Odrade paused before entering her workroom. Duncan had slammed a fist onto the counter beside his console. 'There's got to be a better way for Teg!'
A better way? What does he have in mind?
Movement down the corridor beyond the workroom brought her out of this reflection. Streggi returning from Tamalane. Streggi entered the Acolyte Ready Room. Giving the word to her replacement on the desert map.
A stack of Archival records waited on Odrade's table. Bellonda! Odrade stared at the pile. No matter how much she tried to delegate there was always this organized residue that her councillors insisted only Mother Superior could handle. Much of this new lot came from Bellonda's demand for 'suggestions and analyses.'
Odrade touched her console. 'Bell!'
The voice of an Archives clerk responded: 'Mother Superior?'
'Get Bell up here! I want her in front of me as fast as her fat legs can move!'
It was less than a minute. Bellonda stood in front of the worktable like a chastened acolyte. They all knew that tone in Mother Superior's voice.
Odrade touched the stack on her table and jerked her hand back as though shocked. 'What in the name of Shaitan is all of that?'
