Dune

“My own internal reactions. I read myself, not the person in front of me. I always know a lie because I want to turn my back on the liar.”

“So that’s how you do it!” Pounding his bare arm.

“Others do it differently. One person I heard say she knew a lie because she wanted to put her arm through the liar’s arm and walk a ways, comforting the liar. You may think that’s nonsense, but it works.”

“I think it’s very wise, Shoel.” Love speaking. She did not really know what he meant.

“My precious love,” he said, cradling her head on his arm, “Truthsayers have a Truthsense that, once awakened, works all the time. Please don’t tell me I’m wise when it’s your love speaking.”

“I’m sorry, Shoel.” She liked the smell of his arm and buried her head in the crook of it, tickling him. “But I want to know everything you know.”

He pushed her head into a more comfortable position. “You know what my Third Stage instructor said? ‘Know nothing! Learn to be totally naive.’”

She was astonished. “Nothing at all?”

“You approach everything with a clean slate, nothing on you or in you. Whatever comes is written there by itself.”

She began to see it. “Nothing to interfere.”

“Correct. You are the original ignorant savage, completely unsophisticated to the point where you back right into ultimate sophistication. You find it without looking for it, you might say.”

“Now, that is wise, Shoel. I’ll bet you were the best student they ever had, the quickest and the—”

“I thought it was interminable nonsense.”

“You didn’t!”

“Until one day I read a little twitch in me. It wasn’t the movement of a muscle or something someone else might detect. Just a . . . a twitch.”

“Where was it?”

“Nowhere I could describe. But my Fourth Stage instructor had prepared me for it. ‘Grab that thing with gentle hands. Delicately.’ One of the students thought he meant your real hands. Oh, how we laughed.”

“That was cruel.” She touched his cheek and felt the beginning of his dark stubble. It was late but she did not feel sleepy.

“I suppose it was cruel. But when the twitch came, I knew it. I had never felt such a thing before. I was surprised by it, too, because knowing it then, I knew it had been there all along. It was familiar. It was my Truthsense twitching.”

She thought she could feel Truthsense stirring within herself. The feeling of wonder in his voice aroused something.

“It was mine then,” he said. “It belonged to me and I belonged to it. No separation ever again.”

“How wonderful that must be.” Awe and envy in her voice.

“No! Some of it I hate. Seeing some people this way is like seeing them eviscerated, their guts hanging out.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“Yes, but there are compensations, love. These are people you meet, people who are like beautiful flowers extended to you by an innocent child. Innocence. My own innocence responds and my Truthsense is strengthened. That is what you do for me, my love.”

The no-ship of the Honored Matres arrived at Gammu and they sent her down to the Landing Flat in the garbage lighter. It disgorged her beside the ship’s discards and excrement but she did not mind. Home! I’m home and Lampadas survives.

The Rabbi, however, did not share her enthusiasm.

Once more, they sat in his study, but now she felt more familiar with Other Memory, much more confident. He could see this.

“You are even more like them than ever! It’s unclean.”

“Rabbi, we all have unclean ancestors. I am fortunate in that I know some of mine.”

“What is this? What are you saying?”

“All of us are descendants of people who did nasty things, Rabbi. We don’t like to think of barbarians in our ancestry but they’re there.”

“Such talk!”

“Reverend Mothers can recall them all, Rabbi. Remember, it is the victors who breed. You understand?”

“I’ve never heard you talk so boldly. What has happened to you, daughter?”

“I survived, knowing that victory sometimes is achieved at a moral price.”

“What is this? These are evil words.”

“Evil? Barbarism is not even the proper word for some of the evil things our ancestors did. The ancestors of all of us, Rabbi.”

She saw she had hurt him and felt the cruelty of her own words but could not stop. How could he escape the truth of what she said? He was an honorable man.

She spoke more softly but her words cut him even deeper. “Rabbi, if you shared witness to some of the things Other Memory has forced me to know, you would come back seeking new words for evil. Some things our ancestors have done debase the worst label you could imagine.”

“Rebecca . . . Rebecca . . . I know necessities of . . .”

“Don’t make excuses about ‘necessities of the times’! You, a Rabbi, know better. When are we without a moral sense? It’s just that sometimes we don’t listen.”

He put his hands over his face, rocking back and forth in the old chair. It creaked mournfully.

“Rabbi, you I have always loved and respected. I went through the Agony for you. I shared Lampadas for you. Do not deny what I have learned from this.”