Dune

He lowered his hands. “I do not deny, daughter. But permit me my pain.”

“Out of all these realizations, Rabbi, the thing I must deal with most immediately and without respite is that there are no innocents.”

“Rebecca!”

“Guilty may not be the right word, Rabbi, but our ancestors did things for which payment must be made.”

“That I understand, Rebecca. It is a balance that—”

“Don’t tell me you understand when I know you don’t.” She stood and glared down at him. “It’s not a balance book that you set aright. How far back would you go?”

“Rebecca, I am your Rabbi. You must not talk this way, especially to me.”

“The farther back you go, Rabbi, the worse the evil atrocities and higher the price. You cannot go back that far but I am forced to it.”

Turning, she left him, ignoring the pleading in his voice, the painful way he said her name. As she closed the door, she heard him say: “What have we done? Israel, help her.”

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

—THE BASHAR TEG

When left to his own devices, Idaho often explored his no-ship prison. So much to see and learn about this Ixian artifact. It was a cave of wonders.

He paused on this afternoon’s restless walk through his quarters and looked at the tiny comeyes built into the glittering surface of a doorway. They were watching him. He had the odd sensation of seeing himself through those prying eyes. What did the Sisters think when they looked at him? The blocky ghola-child from Gammu’s long-dead Keep had become a lanky man: dark skin and hair. The hair was longer than when he had entered this no-ship on the last day of Dune.

Bene Gesserit eyes peered below the skin. He was sure they suspected he was a Mentat and he feared how they might interpret that. How could a Mentat expect to hide the fact from Reverend Mothers indefinitely? Foolishness! He knew they already suspected him of Truthsay.

He waved at the comeyes and said: “I’m restless. I think I’ll explore.”

Bellonda hated it when he took that jocular attitude toward surveillance. She did not like him to roam the ship. She did not try to hide it from him. He could see the unspoken question in her glowering features whenever she came to confront him: “Is he looking for a way to escape?”

Exactly what I’m doing, Bell, but not in the way you suspect.

The no-ship presented him with fixed limits: the exterior forcefield he could not penetrate, certain machinery areas where the drive (so he was told) had been temporarily disabled, guard quarters (he could see into some of them but not enter), the armory, the section reserved to the captive Tleilaxu, Scytale. He occasionally met Scytale at one of the barriers and they peered at each other across the silencing field that held them apart. Then there was the information barrier—sections of Shiprecords that would not respond to his questions, answers his warders would not give.

Within these limits lay a lifetime of things to see and learn, even the lifetime of some three hundred Standard Years he could reasonably expect.

If Honored Matres do not find us.

Idaho saw himself as the game they sought, wanting him even more than they wanted the women of Chapterhouse. He had no illusions about what the hunters would do to him. They knew he was here. The men he trained in sexual bonding and sent out to plague the Honored Matres—those men taunted the hunters.

When the Sisters learned of his Mentat ability they would know immediately that his mind carried the memories of more than one ghola lifetime. The original did not have that talent. They would suspect he was a latent Kwisatz Haderach. Look how they rationed his melange. They were clearly terrified of repeating the mistake they had made with Paul Atreides and his Tyrant son. Thirty-five hundred years of bondage!

But dealing with Murbella required Mentat awareness. He entered every encounter with her not expecting to achieve answers then or later. It was a typical Mentat approach: concentrate on the questions. Mentats accumulated questions the way others accumulated answers. Questions created their own patterns and systems. This produced the most important shapes. You looked at your universe through self-created patterns—all composed of images, words, and labels (everything temporary), all mingled in sensory impulses, that reflected off his internal constructs the way light bounced from bright surfaces.

Idaho’s original Mentat instructor had formed the temporary words for that first tentative construct: “Watch for consistent movements against your internal screen.”

From that first hesitant dip into Mentat powers, Idaho could trace the growth of a sensitivity to changes in his own observations, always becoming Mentat.