Dune

“Perhaps nobody. My question is: How have we marked each other, my Sisterhood, and this planet?”

He looked up at her face then down at his hands. Was Chapterhouse marking him right now?

“Most of the marks are deep inside us.” She took his hand. “Come along.” They left the aromatic dell and climbed up into Roitiro’s domain, Odrade speaking as they went.

“The Sisterhood seldom creates botanical gardens,” she said. “Gardens must support far more than eyes and nose.”

“Food?”

“Yes, supportive first of our lives. Gardens produce food. That dell back there is harvested for our kitchens.”

He felt her words flow into him, lodging there among the gaps. He sensed planning for centuries ahead: trees to replace building beams, to hold watersheds, plants to keep lake and river banks from crumbling, to hold topsoil safe from rain and wind, to maintain seashores and even in the waters to make places for fish to breed. The Bene Gesserit also thought of trees for shade and shelter, or to cast interesting shadows on lawns.

“Trees and other plants for all of our symbiotic relationships,” she said.

“Symbiotic?” It was a new word.

She explained with something she knew he already had encountered—going out with others to harvest mushrooms.

“Fungi won’t grow except in the company of friendly roots. Each has a symbiotic relationship with a special plant. Each growing thing takes something it needs from the other.”

She went on at length and, bored with learning, he kicked a clump of grass, then saw how she stared at him in that disturbing way. He had done something offensive. Why was it right to step on one growing thing and not on another?

“Miles! Grass keeps the wind from carrying topsoil into difficult places such as the bottoms of rivers.”

He knew that tone. Reprimanding. He stared down at the grass he had offended.

“These grasses feed our cattle. Some have seeds we eat in bread and other foods. Some cane grasses are windbreaks.”

He knew that! Trying to divert her, he said: “Wind-brakes?” spelling it.

She did not smile and he knew he had been wrong to think he could fool her. Resigned to it, he listened as she went on with the lesson.

When the desert came, she told him, grapes, their taproots down several hundred meters, probably would be the last to go. Orchards would die first.

“Why do they have to die?”

“To make room for more important life.”

“Sandworms and melange.”

He saw he had pleased her by knowing the relationship between sandworms and the spice the Bene Gesserit needed for their existence. He was not sure how that need worked but he imagined a circle: Sandworms to sandtrout to melange and back again. And the Bene Gesserit took what they needed from the circle.

He was still tired of all this teaching, and asked: “If all these things are going to die anyway, why do I have to go back to the library and learn their names?”

“Because you’re human and humans have this deep desire to classify, to apply labels to everything.”

“Why do we have to name things like that?”

“Because that way we lay claim to what we name. We assume an ownership that can be misleading and dangerous.”

So she was back on ownership.

“My street, my lake, my planet,” she said. “My label forever. A label you give to a place or thing may not even last out your lifetime except as a polite sop granted by conquerors . . . or as a sound to remember in fear.”

“Dune,” he said.

“You are quick!”

“Honored Matres burned Dune.”

“They’ll do the same to us if they find us.”

“Not if I’m your Bashar!” The words were out of him without thought but, once spoken, he felt they might have some truth. Library accounts said the Bashar had made enemies tremble just by appearing on a battlefield.

As though she knew what he was thinking, Odrade said: “The Bashar Teg was just as famous for creating situations where no battle was necessary.”

“But he fought your enemies.”

“Never forget Dune, Miles. He died there.”

“I know.”

“Do the Proctors have you studying Caladan yet?”

“Yes. It’s called Dan in my histories.”

“Labels, Miles. Names are interesting reminders but most people don’t make other connections. Boring history, eh? Names—convenient pointers, useful mostly with your own kind?”

“Are you my kind?” It was a question that plagued him but not in those words until this instant.

“We are Atreides, you and I. Remember that when you return to your study of Caladan.”

When they went back through the orchards and across a pasture to the vantage knoll with its limb-framed view of Central, Teg saw the administrative complex and its barrier plantations with new sensitivity. He held this close as they went down the fenced lane to the arch into First Street.

“A living jewel,” Odrade called Central.

As they passed under it, he looked up at the street name burned into the entrance arch. Galach in an elegant script with flowing lines, Bene Gesserit decorative. All streets and buildings were labeled in that same cursive.