Dune

“Then what can we do?”

“We will see. My people are not entirely helpless, you understand?”

She recognized sincerity and concern for her. He spoke quietly of resisting the sexual blandishments of Honored Matres, “doing it unobtrusively so as not to arouse them.”

“I will go whisper in a few ears,” he said.

She felt oddly restored by this. There often was something coldly remote and cruel about falling into the hands of the medical professions. She reassured herself with the knowledge that Suks were conditioned to be alert to your needs, compassionate and supportive. (All of those things that can fall by the wayside in emergencies.)

She bent her efforts to restoring calm, focusing on the personal mantra she had gained in solo death education.

If I am to die, I must pass along a transcendental lesson. I must leave with serenity.

That helped but still she felt a trembling. The Rabbi had been gone too long. Something was wrong.

Was I right to trust him?

Despite a growing sense of doom, Lucilla forced herself to practice Bene Gesserit naivete as she reviewed her encounter with the Rabbi. Her Proctors had called this “the innocence that goes naturally with inexperience, a condition often confused with ignorance.” Into this naivete all things flowed. It was close to Mentat performance. Information entered without prejudgment. “You are a mirror upon which the universe is reflected. That reflection is all you experience. Images bounce from your senses. Hypotheses arise. Important even when wrong. Here is the exceptional case where more than one wrong can produce dependable decisions.”

“We are your willing servants,” the Rabbi had said.

That was guaranteed to alert a Reverend Mother.

The explanations of Odrade’s crystal felt suddenly inadequate. It’s almost always profit. She accepted this as cynical but from vast experience. Attempts to weed it out of human behavior always broke up on the rocks of application. Socializing and communistic systems only changed the counters that measured profits. Enormous managerial bureaucracies—the counter was power.

Lucilla warned herself that the manifestations were always the same. Look at this Rabbi’s extensive farm! Retirement retreat for a Suk? She had seen something of what lay behind the establishment: servants, richer quarters. And there must be more. No matter the system it was always the same: the best foods, beautiful lovers, unrestricted travel, magnificent holiday accommodations.

It gets very tiresome when you’ve seen it as often as we have.

She knew her mind was jittering but felt powerless to prevent it. Survival. The very bottom of the demand system is always survival. And I threaten the survival of the Rabbi and his people.

He had fawned upon her. Always beware of those who fawn upon us, nuzzling up to all of that power we’re supposed to have. How flattering to find great mobs of servants waiting and anxious to do our bidding! How utterly debilitating.

The mistake of Honored Matres.

What is delaying the Rabbi?

Was he seeing how much he could get for the Reverend Mother Lucilla?

A door slammed below her, shaking the floor under her feet. She heard hurried footsteps on a stairway. How primitive these people were. Stairways! Lucilla turned as the door opened. The Rabbi entered bringing a rich smell of melange. He stood by the door assessing her mood.

“Forgive my tardiness, dear lady. I was summoned for questioning by Edric, the Guild Navigator.”

That explained the smell of spice. Navigators were forever bathed in the orange gas of melange, their features often fogged by the vapors. Lucilla could visualize the Navigator’s tiny v of a mouth and the ugly flap of nose. Mouth and nose appeared small on a Navigator’s gigantic face with its pulsing temples. She knew how threatened the Rabbi must have felt listening to the singsong ululations of the Navigator’s voice with its simultaneous mechtranslation into impersonal Galach.

“What did he want?”

“You.”

“Does he . . .”

“He does not know for sure but I am certain he suspects us. However, he suspects everybody.”

“Did they follow you?”

“Not necessary. They can find me any time they want.”

“What shall we do?” She knew she spoke too fast, much too loud.

“Dear lady . . .” He came three steps closer and she saw the perspiration on his forehead and nose. Fear. She could smell it.

“Well, what is it?”