Dune

Was the fossil dance to become fossil sex?

“Who are you talking to, Mother?”

It was Sheeana’s voice from the open doorway across the room. Her gray postulant’s robe was only a faint shape there, growing larger as she approached.

“Mother Superior sent me for you,” Sheeana said as she came to a stop near Odrade.

“I was talking to myself,” Odrade said. She looked at the strangely quiet girl, remembering the gut-wrenching excitement of that moment when the Fulcrum Question had been asked of Sheeana.

“Do you wish to be a Reverend Mother?”

“Why are you talking to yourself, Mother?” There was a load of concern in Sheeana’s voice. The Teaching Proctors would have their hands full removing those emotions.

“I was remembering when I asked you if you wished to be a Reverend Mother,” Odrade said. “It prompted other thoughts.”

“You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back nothing, disobeying you in nothing.”

“And you said: ‘Is that all?’”

“I didn’t know very much, did I? I still don’t know very much.”

“None of us does, child. Except that we’re all in the dance together. And Shaitan will certainly come if the least of us fails.”

When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.

—THE LADY JESSICA, FROM “WISDOM OF ARRAKIS”

The last greenish line of light fell out of the horizon before Burzmali gave the signal for them to move. It was dark by the time they reached the far side of Ysai and the perimeter road that was to lead them to Duncan. Clouds covered the sky, reflecting the city’s lights downward onto the shapes of the urban hovels through which their guides directed them.

These guides bothered Lucilla. They appeared out of side streets and from suddenly opened doorways to whisper new directions.

Too many people knew about the fugitive pair and their intended rendezvous!

She had come to grips with her hatred but the residue was a profound distrust of every person they saw. Hiding this behind the mechanical attitudes of a playfem with her customer had become increasingly difficult.

There was slush on the pedestrian way beside the road, most of it scattered there by the passage of groundcars. Lucilla’s feet were cold before they had gone half a kilometer and she was forced to expend energy compensating for the added bloodflow in her extremities.

Burzmali walked silently, his head down, apparently lost in his own worries. Lucilla was not fooled. He heard every sound around them, saw every approaching vehicle. He hustled them off the pathway each time a groundcar approached. The cars went swishing past on their suspensors, the dirty slush flying from under their fanskirts and peppering the bushes along the road. Burzmali held her down beside him in the snow until he was sure the cars were out of sight and sound. Not that anyone riding in them could hear much except their own whirling passage.

They had been walking for two hours before Burzmali stopped and took stock of the way ahead. Their destination was a perimeter community that had been described to them as “completely safe.” Lucilla knew better. No place on Gammu was completely safe.

Yellow lights cast an undershot glow on the clouds ahead of them, marking the location of the community. Their slushy progress took them through a tunnel under the perimeter road and up a low hill planted to some sort of orchard. The limbs were stark in the dim light.

Lucilla glanced upward. The clouds were thinning. Gammu had many small moons—fortress no-ships. Some of them had been placed by Teg but she glimpsed lines of new ones sharing the guardian role. They appeared to be about four times the size of the brightest stars and they often traveled together, which made their reflected light useful but erratic because they moved fast—up across the sky and below the horizon in only a few hours. She glimpsed a string of six such moons through a break in the clouds, wondering if they were part of Teg’s defense system.

Momentarily, she reflected on the inherent weakness of the siege mentality that such defenses represented. Teg had been right about them. Mobility was the key to military success but she doubted that he had meant mobility on foot.

There were no easy hiding places on the snow-whitened slope and Lucilla felt Burzmali’s nervousness. What could they do here if someone came? A snow-covered depression led down from their position to the left, angling toward the community. It was not a road but she thought it might be a path.

“Down this way,” Burzmali said, leading them into the depression.

The snow came up to their calves.

“I hope these people are trustworthy,” she said.

“They hate the Honored Matres,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”

“The ghola had better be there!” She held back an even more angry response but could not keep herself from adding: “Their hatred isn’t enough for me.”

It was better to expect the worst, she thought.